The Envelope
by CrackinAndProudOfIt
Summary: I'd be lying if I told you that Crackers was normal *before* her favourite author showed up and enlisted her in a program that would grant her wishes, but her life was about to cast off any semblance of the word... Part of the Plush Toy Collaboration
1. The Great T

_Hmm..._ thought Crackers, _what's a good one?_ She stared down at the sheet of notebook paper covered in whimsically-written Fëanorian quotes. _Oh, yes! How could I forget? White hot!_ She quickly added the description of Maedhros to her ballpoint-pen masterpiece and began wracking her brain for one last quote in order to fill the page.

Meanwhile, in the front of the room, her instructor continued to drone on about something relating to molecular bonding that, at any rate, was completely irrelevant to the daily life of our distracted Tolkien nerd, however attentive she usually was in class.

"Now, a carbon atom can form, as you know-" The instructor was suddenly interrupted by the following strange intercom buzz-in, which immediately recalled the full attention of Crackers to her surroundings: "May I have CrackinAndProudOfIt to the main office, please?"

"Excuse me?" said the instructor, thoroughly puzzled. She had no student that she knew by that strange name, but the thing that confused her the most was the voice over the speakers. Instead of the ever-weary receptionist's bored monotone, it was a man's, and what's more, he had a British accent.

"May I have CrackinAndProudOfIt to the main office _at once_?" the man repeated. "She knows who she is, and she needs to come down immediately."

"Louisa, is this some sort of practical joke?" The instructor's tone was now frustrated; she _was_ frustrated! Apparently, the receptionist had run out of office work and was amusing herself by prank-calling unsuspecting classes!

"Most certainly not!" responded the voice, "Now, Crackers, _do_ come to the office! Stop causing this poor woman trouble!"

As soon as Crackers had heard her PenName called, her heart had began to pound. No one knew her FF name here, did they? How was this possible? And who was this British guy? Most importantly, why did he want to see _her_? Exciting things like this never happened to Crackers! She was more than content to just quietly blend into the woodwork most of the time; she didn't like attention, and she knew that what her curiosity was now obligating her to do would get her more of it than she had gotten in a long time, but she did it anyway. She rose from her seat, pushed in the chair, and made for the door from her spot in the back.

Every head in the room turned to stare at her; to the instructor's questioning look, she answered, "It's me. It's-it's-it's just a username on a website I get on." She ended quietly, feeling her face heat up before she turned and bolted out of the class and into the empty hallway.

Her purple tennis shoes clicked conspicuously on the scuffed tile floor as she made her way to the main office. A knot barely had time to form in her stomach before she found herself standing outside the white door, poised to turn the silver handle and enter. She rotated it to the left, staring at it in her bony hand before stepping into the office.

She looked up to see the source of the British voice; her jaw dropped, and she let the door slam shut behind her. Before the astonished fanfic writer stood a white-haired man in a brown tweed overcoat with a brown button-up vest, white shirt, and tie that nearly matched his overcoat, underneath. In his hand was an unlit tobacco pipe. Crackers was struck dumb(er than usual).

"CrackinAndProudOfIt, I presume?" Sure enough, his voice was that that had called her to the office, and seeing his attire, Crackers was not surprised. It still sent chills down her spine, though: Here was her hero, apparently risen from the dead, and he had just looked her in the eye and spoken to her.

She nodded silently, eyes wide, and shut her gaping mouth as a barrage of fearful thoughts bombarded her mind. _Risen from the dead?_ She was losing it and seeing ghosts. Or maybe she wasn't losing it, and this was really a ghost, or worse, a demon! She made up her mind to speak, though; she felt she had to, if she wanted any hope of figuring this mess out.

Summoning up all of her courage- there wasn't much- she squeaked, "P-p-p-p, I mean, M-m-m-m-Mister T-tolkien?" She'd remembered almost too late his preferred form of address, as written in one of his letters.

The Great Professor chuckled warmly, a smile spreading across his features. "Well, my girl, I don't suppose you _were_ expecting to see me here today- or ever, for that matter." He chuckled again. "Come, girl, let's take a walk while I tell you about the reason behind this visit: wish-granting. Louisa," He raised his voice to call the receptionist, "you may come off your break now."

Tolkien placed a shockingly substantial (for what could possibly be a ghost) hand on Crackers' shoulder and guided her out the door. The pair turned left and began to walk up and down a wide, high-ceilinged hallway whose walls were lined with pictures of smiling alumni. Crackers broke the silence by stammering, "W-wish granting, s-sir?"

"Yes, girl, wish-granting," answered the Professor, "For all of my readers who have wished many times to meet my characters, I have, with some..._help_, developed a program that will enable them to do so, using- what do you call them?- oh, yes, plushies, life-sized plushies. You, CrackinAndProudOfIt, have been selected to become a participant."

Crackers was stunned. She was now _confident_ that this had to be some sort of hallucination. It just had to be; it defied all logic! Deep inside, though, she had that sinking feeling that told her it was real.

"M-me, sir?" she replied, "I'm honoured! With all due respect, though, how will I meet the characters by simply having large plush toys of them?"

"Did I ever say they were _ordinary_ toys?" A twinkle appeared in his eyes, but Tolkien soon grew grave once more. He produced from somewhere inside his overcoat a white envelope, sealed with his publishing symbol but otherwise unadorned. "Here," he said, "this has a good deal of information specific to your five plushies, as well as activation information, and a little bit of explanation. However, most of the explanation I will cover presently. Do you have any questions that you want to begin with?"

Crackers' hand was trembling as she reached out to take the envelope; it, too, felt real. She slipped it into her massive brown purse. (The tacky thing accompanied her everywhere, chiefly on account of paranoia.)

"As a m-matter of fact, sir, I do," she answered, confidence unexpectedly building in her voice. "First, with all due respect once more, aren't you dead? Second, what if I don't have room in my 900-square foot house for five life-sized plushies? How long is your program going to last for? Is this a dream?"

"Slow down, my girl. I am about to answer all of those questions and more. I will start with the first, though. You see, some people don't die-"

He was cut off by what sounded to Crackers like a strange ringtone. Tolkien sighed and pulled out of his pocket... an iPhone? Upon looking at the screen, he swore under his breath and muttered, "That Michael is always wanting something!"

To Crackers, he said, sounding aggravated, "Excuse me, I had best take this."

He put the phone to his ear and answered it with, "Hello, Mr. Jackson."

_Michael Jackson?_ Both of Crackers' heroes were actually alive! _After all of those times Mom teased me because they were both dead, too..._ she thought to herself, not without a twinge of excitement.

"Yes, yes," Tolkien was now saying, "I don't give tuppence what Mr. Presley has done... No! No, I can't... _**What?**_ No, he wouldn't have!" Tolkien cursed, cursed again, and continued, "I'll be back at once... So sorry... Thank you, sir... Good-bye."

He hung up and turned to Crackers, speaking swiftly, "I apologize, my girl. Unfortunate circumstances have arisen, and I am forced to cut this visit short. Your letter will give you enough information to go by. Farewell."

He pressed something else into her hand; she glanced down to see a pass back to class, filled out and signed by the receptionist. _How had they known what time it would be? _she wondered. When she looked back up, the Professor had vanished.


	2. A Useless Letter

Hours later, Crackers found herself sitting cross-legged on her faux tile bedroom floor, perched on top of a pillow in order to keep from touching the hard and frigid ground. Directly in front of her was a little white Sunbeam heater that she was fond of warming herself close to for hours on end; the poor dear always seemed to be cold. More important, though, was the curious, and still inescapably real, item clutched in her left hand and that she was poised to open with her right: a standard white envelope, plain but for the publishing symbol of one J.R.R. Tolkien.

She hadn't told anyone about it, the envelope or the visit. Come and think of it, though, she didn't have a very good reason not to have. _"They'll think I'm crazy"?_ Just who in her life did she think was _not _of the firm opinion that she wasn't exactly sane? No one, that she knew of; so telling someone that a forty-years-dead British author had paid her a visit in the middle of class today may or may not have surprised them. Mum, however, had still been the word as regarding her Strange Experience of the Day.

Taking a deep breath, Crackers slipped her long thumbnail underneath of the black wax seal, lifted the envelope's flap, and removed from it a single sheet of paper, about the same colour as the pages of your typical paperback. That was it? One piece of paper with writing on one side only, to give her the detailed information Tolkien had promised? She had been expecting, oh, I don't know, maybe something…_more_!

Despite feeling somewhat slighted, she knew she had little choice but to attempt to glean whatever information she could from the letter. She unfolded the page, only to reveal three type-written paragraphs with gaps for more specific information to be filled in by hand. She quickly scanned the letter, only to be left thinking, _This sounds more like warranty information than explanations and instructions!_

She read over it again, this time slowly and meticulously, wondering if she'd perhaps skipped over the part Tolkien had referred to. It said the following:

_Dear ___**CrackinAndProudOfIt **__:_

_Congratulations! Your application to the Famous Authors Using Living Toys to Thank You (F.A.U.L.T.T.Y.) Program has been accepted! _What application? thought Crackers. _As a result of this, you will in the near future receive five life-sized plush toys based on characters created by _**_J.R.R. Tolkien_**_. You may recognize the names of these toys: _**_Maeglin_**_, _**_Curufin_**_, _**_Maedhros**_, _**_Eöl_**_, and _**_Fingon_**_. In fact, if you do not recognize them, there has been a grave mistake, and it is imperative that you call the following telephone number: __**_**__ for your own personal safety._

Crackers recognized the names, too well, for now she was in full-fledged panic mode: She was getting plushies of Curufin and Eöl, plushies that would apparently come to life. What was Tolkien thinking? He created the characters; he knew where the enmity of each was directed, so he had to have known that this was a disaster waiting to occur. Was this some sort of cruel punishment for having such varying taste?

Had the letter actually _had_ the phone number written on it, she knew she would have called and played dumb, said whatever it took to get herself out of this. However, the number's blank space had been conveniently overlooked by the kind individual filling out her letter. Of course. What choice had she but to read on, though?

_In the event that you do recognize these names, as you should, the plushies will become your charges from the moment they arrive on your doorstep. (If you are reading this, then they are en route.) The F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Program is not responsible for damage incurred upon your person, your property, or your general surroundings due to misuse of your plush toys: you are. Seeing as you become liable for them, you are also strongly cautioned to keep them within your sight at all times._

Isn't _that _comforting? thought Crackers, eyes growing rather wide at the frightening idea of her being responsible for five elven plushies. The worst part, though, was the dread. The letter had informed her that the impending of doom of fighting plushies was even now drawing closer to her house. Why do they send out these stupid letters, anyway? she mentally complained. Maybe it would be better just to surprise the F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Program's victims than to have them worry and panic about what was to come! She immediately recalled the notion, though. For a person of her own disposition, she knew that it was much better to "get one's head around" things beforehand.

She had but two last paragraphs left and had learned little to help her. Perhaps this final bit would, though? She began to finish reading the letter.

_You must know that your plush toys, prior to being de-activated for shipping, have been educated in a few basic skills necessary in your modern world (e.g. driving a car, speaking English, shooting a gun, etc.) in the event that they should need these talents for survival. _

Shoot a gun? thought Crackers. Oh, this is _not _good.

_Also, your plushies will not come packaged with any sort of weapon, on account of unfortunate mishaps in the past involving bewilderment upon delivery and activation. For further instruction upon the arrival of your toys, their packages will contain some, but you assuredly will not be on your own in this endeavour as long as you follow one simple rule: Do not throw away this envelope. Keep it with you always, let no one else read its contents, and above all, obey whatever direction it provides you with._

_Best of luck to you,_

_ The F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Team_

And that was it. That was all of the "explanation and information" she was going to receive. She wondered if all of that business about the envelope there at the end meant she would receive more, though. It certainly sounded like it. Crackers re-read the letter and sat completely still for several minutes, staring into the depths of her heater's vents and contemplating her current predicament.

For some reason, the idea that this F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. program wasn't just going to turn these plushies loose on her and then completely evaporate made her feel considerably better. She whispered a prayer that the last sentences had indeed meant such and began to wonder if by "en route" the letter had meant that they would arrive tonight…

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps passing through her younger sister's room and into her own doorway. (The two bedrooms were connected by Crackers' door.) She looked up from her reflecting to see her mother, a blonde woman not unlike Crackers herself in most ways but appearance, standing just inside her room, between the chest-of-drawers and the chinchillas' cage.

"Crackers," her mother said, though she used an alternate name which I am unable to disclose, for the protection of the identities of those involved, "did you order something online? There are some packages out on the porch, and I must have been smoking dope when they got delivered, because I didn't see it happen. They're pretty big, and the weird part is that they're addressed to that username of yours, 'CrackinAndProudOfIt.' Did you use that to order something?"

(No, to answer your question, Crackers' mother does not, nor has ever, used illegal drugs; she only happens to be a very funny lady with a facetious manner of speaking.)

Crackers wasn't at all superstitious, but she mentally scolded herself for "jinxing" it by wondering how soon the plushies would arrive. She hadn't yet thought about what she would tell her family, but she got a sudden notion that she would only be believed if the proof was standing right next to her.

"Yes and no," she answered mysteriously, a wry smile inadvertently forming on her features.

She twisted her heater's knob to turn it off and began making her short way to the living room and out the door to the front porch, mother in tow. Unlocking the main door and then the storm door, the two stepped out into the cold air of January's early dusk and found on their concrete doorstep five cardboard boxes, each between six and seven and a half feet long, narrow, as if you could place dead bodies inside.

A fleeting thought asked Crackers if leaving the boxes would eventually result in their disappearance. She doubted it, but she was tempted to try… And then one of them moved.


	3. The Fangirl Within

The first thing that came to Crackers' mind when the box twitched was not very pleasant, the second was, "It's too late!" and the third was interrupted by her mother's nervous inquiry, "What's in that box, Crackers?"

The reply of Our Favourite Tolkien Nerd was quiet and almost apologetic, "You won't believe me until I show you." She paused a moment before continuing. "Will you help me carry them in?"

Crackers' mother called for the help of her younger sister, who was at present sitting on the green couch that dominated the back wall of the family's small living room. She yanked an earbud out of her ear, from which could be heard blaring Taylor Swift's "Mean," and looked up from her novel, the latest from Rick Riordan. "What?" she said, annoyed.

"Would you mind holding the door while we bring these in?" her mother asked, turning around to face her daughter from the doorway.

"Fine," answered the girl with an irritated sigh. She trudged over to the flimsy screen door, one earphone still in, stepped out onto the porch, and leaned up against the door. She almost rolled her eyes, but halfway up they were stayed, instead growing large as she raised her eyebrows after one look at the packages. "What _are_ those?"

"_You'll. See,_" said Crackers, lips pursed in the frustration that had sprung from her attempts at not showing fear.

Crackers and her mother bent to pick up the box closest to the door. It was surprisingly light, despite being bulky in shape; Crackers had a feeling that this plushie had not yet been "activated." Her mother made to set it down in the living room floor, but Crackers said, "Can we just take them to my room?"

One by one, they carried the next three boxes inside, lining them up across Crackers' spacious floor-center, until they had covered her zebra-print rug, and there was space for only one more: the last package, the one that had moved.

When at last its time came, the two approached it apprehensively. It had been the second-nearest to the door, located between the actual doorstep and the ivy-covered garden and still beneath the porch's aluminum roof, but they had come to the unspoken consensus not to bring it in yet. It proved to be considerably heavier than the others, and mother and daughter nearly dropped it when it moved again.

The eyes of Crackers' mother grew wide, but Crackers did not meet them, instead staring at her feet. Gratefully, she was walking backward, and therefore had an excuse to. They both sighed upon setting the box down; it had been rather taxing to carry it even the few feet through their house. Crackers' sister had followed them, and now the first chords of "Love Story" could be faintly heard from the loose earbud.

Both mother and sister now stood staring expectantly at Crackers, arms crossed and looking as though they awaited something. Crackers stared down awkwardly at one of the packages, reading the label. Sure enough, it said, "CrackinAndProudOfIt," followed by her own address. Where the return address should have been was only, "F.A.U.L.T.T.Y." cleverly written in _tengwar_; in place of a stamp was Tolkien's symbol.

"Well, aren't you going to _open _them?" asked Crackers' sister.

"I…I…" stuttered Crackers, "I should do that alone." Her family members shared a look of suspicion. "Please? I just need to…put them together," she pleaded. Wordlessly, with skeptical expressions still fixed on their faces, they turned and exited the room. Yanking off her seasonal doorknob hanger- yes, she is that much of a dork- she shut the door behind them and turned to face the boxes.

The heavy, moving one began to twitch again; it was the farthest right and closest to her bed, which was positioned with its right side up against the wall. An unclear curse could be heard from inside the package. She hoped her mother hadn't heard. Her heart was pounding, and she stepped over it to grab the envelope with shaking hands from where she'd placed it upon the bed when she'd left the room. She opened it, only to find the sheet of paper gone, replaced by a sticky note. Scrawled upon it were the words: _"A box without hinges, key, or lid; yet inside golden treasure is hid. - __The Hobbit__"_

"Eggs?" said Crackers incredulously. That was the helpful advice she was supposed to find in the envelope? An obscure quote referring to something totally irrelevant was supposed to guide her in how to handle this situation? What did it mean? There were no eggs here!

But there was a box without hinges or key, despite its having a lid. As for golden treasure inside, though? That could be debatable. She had a feeling she knew what the cryptic words were code for, "Open the box."

_Oh, shoot, _she thought, _**that**__ box? _and winced. It was now beginning to shake more violently; she knew what need be done. Weaving her way around the other packages, she walked over to her desk and pulled off of it her knife. She immediately flicked it out from its folded position. It had a black haft speckled with decorative silver-lined holes and as sharp stainless-steel blade, measuring in at a grand total of two and a half inches.

She didn't need a random quote from the envelope to remind her of Beleg's experience with pointing sharp objects at confused people. This was just great. As she made her way back over to the rattling box and bent down beside it, poised to slice apart the packing tape, she said loudly, "Okay, when you see me, I'm going to be holding a knife, but it is _not _to attack you with! I'm only using it to get you out of that thing, got it?"

A muffled sound that she prayed was an affirmative came from inside the package. She slit the tape horizontally at either end, then, swallowing hard and after a moment's hesitation, cut the vertical tape. She instantly jumped back, for the lid-flaps flew asunder and before she knew it, there stood upright in the box, silver packing peanuts falling about him, the most attractive man she had ever seen.

His long, black hair was braided back out of his face; he had sharp, defined features and intense grey eyes that gave him a look both of calculating intelligence and pride. He must have stood six and a half feet high. He was clad in modern attire: blue jeans and an un-tucked black button-down dress shirt. On his right wrist, however, was tied a white tag with only one word upon it, "Curufin." In the spirit of OFUM, she fought back her Inner Luster.

She flicked her knife shut behind her back and watched as he appeared to size her up, analyzing her purple Hanes sweatshirt, extremely baggy yoga-style pants, and wavy brown hair falling out of a braid on the left side of her head. _Praise God I'm not in my thermal underwear! _she thought. The two stared at one another for a moment longer, and then he spoke, asking bluntly, "Who are you, and where am I?"

Crackers could tell that he was genuinely puzzled, and even the tiniest bit frightened, though trying to hide both behind the curt questions. She swallowed hard, thinking _I am _not _going to stutter, _and replied, "My bedroom, the United States, year two-thousand twelve." She made it without stuttering, but she'd spoken phenomenally quickly.

Curufin appeared to digest his for a moment before repeating his first query, "And you are?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Crackers, her voice squeaking on "ry" as she blushed. She checked herself before answering with her given name, remembering under what identity the plushies had been shipped to her. "I'm CrackinAndProudOfIt." She stuck out her hand to the Elf.

"As if that weren't apparent," he muttered sardonically, drawing a chuckle from our beloved fanfic writer. He took her hand and gave it a firm shake; she succeeded in not passing out on the spot.

"Or Crackers, for short," she said quietly as she kept shaking his hand up and down and up and down and up and won until he gently removed it from her grasp.

"Sorry!" she exclaimed, "Curufin."

"How did you know that?" he responded swiftly.

She wordlessly indicated the tag, which he regarded with horror for what was obviously the first time. He immediately tried to slip it off, then several times to untie the small knot as best he could with his free left hand and bent right, to no avail.

Crackers, seeing his predicament, flicked her knife open and held it up. "I could…" she suggested, taking as step toward Curufin.

Upon hearing the blade click into place, his head had immediately swiveled up to stare at the source of the sound. "I'll take care of it," he said, and held out his left hand.

Crackers jerked the knife away from hi, clutching it convulsively to her chest, vertically, of course. "No!" she exclaimed, recalling a certain notation from the letter. What had it said? _"Mishaps involving bewilderment upon delivery and activation," _assuredly _not _a topic Crackers wanted an experience in. "Why would I trust _you _with a knife?"

Curufin snorted. "If that's the case," he replied, "then why would I trust _you _with a knife? Especially when it just so happens to be next to my skin? Hand it over."

He had a point, but, still, how did Tolkien describe him? "Perilous of mood," or whatever: the "_perfect_" criterion for the surrender of weapons to. "I'd rather not…" Crackers answered slowly.

Curufin responded in a soft tone through gritted teeth, "_Give it to me, or _I. will. take. it."

Reluctantly, Crackers place the small knife's haft in his outstretched palm. He quickly proceeded to slip the blade beneath the string on his wrist, and the tag fell to the floor. "Just to prove you wrong," he said, holding the knife back out to her, "I'm not even going to hurt you."

She resisted the urge to reply with something along the lines of, "Gee, don't I feel special?" and instead took it from him with a simple and quiet, "Thanks." She folded the blade back down into the haft and set it down on top of the chest-of-drawers behind her, in front of the glass sand-timer, vase of black silk roses, and Collector's Edition 'Return of the King' calendar. "Well…" she said uncomfortably, glancing nervously around at her bedroom, first at her fuzzy-socked feet, then up at Curufin, then back down at the four unopened packages in the floor.

"_Well,_" said Curufin, stepping out of his box and scattering more packing peanuts across the tile and other packages. "Aren't you going to open the others?"

**A/N: You might have noticed my little inter-fic reference, and I'd just like to say that "OFUM" and "Inner Luster" belong to the amazing Miss Cam, whom I, unfortunately, am not.**


	4. But Wait: There's More

It seemed that the other four boxes all began to twitch at once. Crackers proceeded to commence the wringing of her hands and muttering of something borderline-incomprehensible along the lines of, "What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do!" She checked herself before starting to pace across the room in a nervous fashion to compliment her other panicky behaviours. She tended to handle pressure fairly well, but this... Silmarillion characters invading one's life has a denormalizing effect, believe it or not. However, due to the presence of Curufin, adding to the stress though he was, she managed to pull herself together and take the knife in hand once more.

Crackers stepped over to the package on the far left. Its end was lined up precariously near to the bars of the chinchilla-cage. To the horror of our afflicted nerd, Elladan and Elrohir (not the half-elves, their furry namesakes) had already managed to chew a rather large hole in the cardboard, revealing a socked foot. "Boys!" scolded Crackers, stooping to push the box away from the rodents' champing mouths.

She was not fast enough, though, for the package was heavy, and before she could move it, chomp! Beige Elrohir, always a frisky and hungry little fellow, had sunk his sharp teeth directly into the foot's toe.

A loud curse went up from the box, startling the chinchillas away from the bars. _Shoot, _thought Crackers, _I know Mom heard that one_! From a few feet away, Curufin chuckled. "Off to an auspicious start, are we?" he asked sardonically.

Crackers made no reply, instead speaking to the box as she flicked out her knife-blade once more. "Sorry!" she squeaked, "I hope he didn't…draw blood… Anyway, please don't hurt me over it when I let you out," she ended lamely. Lost for words, she turned to Curufin. "Do you mind passing me that?" She indicated the envelope on her bed.

"This?" he answered, holding it up.

"What else?" Crackers retorted, and stuck out her hand. Curufin gave her the envelope, shooting a curious glance between it and her.

Crackers paid him no heed, for once having eyes only for the envelope as the banging and twitching from the package grew louder. She opened the envelope to find a yellowed "Christmas 1972" card with the following words written in gorgeous calligraphy beneath the printed greeting of, "May this holiday season be filled with special surprises": "Sworn word may strengthen quaking heart."_ How is it that this randomness always_ _seems to make a ridiculous sort of sense? _thought Crackers.

She continued speaking to the box. "In fact, I'm not going to free you until you swear not to harm me- or my chinchillas- once you get out." An uncharacteristic boldness had transformed her little voice. The envelope seemed to have that sort of marvelous effect on the one obeying it.

Mumbling and more banging could be heard from within the package before a deep voice with an accent unlike Curufin's could be heard assenting, "I swear it."

Crackers sliced apart the tape on the box, and jumped back as an Elf emerged from the package, somewhat more slowly than Curufin had, putting all his weight on one foot. Dressed completely in black he was, topped off by an undoubtedly sexy leather trench coat. He was somewhat shorter than Curufin; this fact was not helped by his standing slightly hunched over. His hair and eyes were both dark, and from his wrist hung a tag reading, "Eöl."

The first thing in the room that he noticed was Curufin. "And what are _you_ doing here?" he asked scornfully. "You people seem to make a habit of showing up where you're least wanted."

"Oh, and you're one to talk, trespasser and thief," replied Curufin caustically, an icy glint appearing in his eyes. He advanced toward Eöl, but Crackers jumped in between them, fishing in the envelope for advice and nearly tripping over the package next to Eöl's now-empty one in the process.

"Break it up, break it up!" she cried, pulling out a leaf-shaped Post-It reading, " 'then softly she began to sing.' –_Leithian, Canto XIII_" This had to be some sort of joke.

The first song to her head came out her mouth. "_Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends?_" Curufin and Eöl merely stared, aghast at the horrible racket. In her backyard, an innocent squirrel fell dead from a tree at the sound.

"Can't we just save this for another time? Please?" she begged, stuttering over the first few awkward words after her impromptu serenade.

"No," chorused Curufin and Eöl.

"Umm, what about the laws of the Eldar?" Crackers suggested hopefully. "Is either of you permitted to slay the other at this time? And, anyway, how would you do it? I'm the one who has the weapon." Here she waved her knife about for emphasis, and Eöl made a grab at it. She snatched it away from him, saying almost teasingly, "You swore!"

"Is he a chinchilla?" responded Eöl.

"No, but you'll have to hurt me to take this knife, and you swore against that!" said Crackers triumphantly. She seemed to have scored a point, for Eöl made no reply. "All right," she continued, "can the two of you restrain your passions long enough for me to free the other three?" She took the silence as a "yes," and after her general "me plus knife does not equal murderous intentions, you spastic elves" lecture, directed at the remaining packages, set to work on them.

The first package she opened was that of Maedhros. The marvelous control she had displayed over her Inner Luster in the case of Curufin paled in comparison to the iron will that it took not to completely _melt _at the feet of Fëanor's eldest. His luscious copper hair hung loose, partially covering his simply _divine _features. Even with his shirt on, Crackers could tell that he was solid muscle. Eep. The fact that he still lacked a hand in plushie form detracted from his looks not at all. When they shook, he was unknowingly holding her up on her feet.

The next box was that of Fingon. The black-haired prince was not as stunning in looks as his half-cousin, but he made up for any deficit with his charm. He didn't shake Crackers' hand like Curufin and Maedhros had. Rather, he bowed low, saying, "Fingon, son of Fingolfin." If that wasn't enough already to impress her, when she stuck out her hand, he did take it: to plant a kiss on it with the frighteningly sincere words, "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Crackers." He smiled radiantly, and Crackers giggled in a most undignified manner. She liked Fingon already.

Her final package was Maeglin's and he was everything she'd imagined him to be and more: the very image from which had sprung the phrase, "tall, dark, and handsome." His facial features were a strange but attractive fusion of Fingon's and Eöl's. Crackers extended her hand. "Maeglin," he said, taking it.

"Crackers," she replied.

Next, she passed around the knife for tag removal, fearing less for her safety than with Curufin alone, on account of Eöl's oath and the trustworthiness of Fingon and Maedhros. Maeglin, she was admittedly suspicious of, but her skepticism was unfounded, for he finished his tag and held the hilt back out to her politely.

Crackers was at a loss for what to do next, so she opened the envelope to find a Pink Slip reading, " '…no secrets between us.' –Bilbo." What was it with these stupid quotes? The applicability of them was beyond a stretch, but somehow perfectly interpretable. She needed to tell her sister (whom we'll call StarrySea) and her mother what was going on. This wouldn't be pretty.

No initiative had to be taken on the part of Crackers, though, for even as she stood contemplating the Pink Slip's meaning, a knock sounded at the door. The voice she next heard was her mother's, and it was concerned. "What's taking so long? Who are you talking to?"

Crackers inhaled deeply and exhaled with a sigh. "Come in," she called weakly.

Her battered and decorated bedroom door opened outward, and into the room stepped Crackers' family. Their eyes widened at the sight of five exceedingly-attractive men standing beside the opened boxes on the now packing-peanut-littered floor. Elladan and Elrohir had managed to collect a few of the peanuts as they flew through the air upon plushie-emergences and were now munching happily on the Styrofoam. The chinchillas' oblivious chewing was the only sound to be heard in all the little house.

An expression of fury, terror, and wonder all at once crossed Crackers' mother's visage before the anger dominated in the tone of her next question: "What _the heck_ is going on here?"

Crackers lowered her eyes, for the first time in her life thinking an assortment of very rude things about Professor Tolkien. "Before I tell you," she said slowly and humbly, still without looking at her mother. She lifted her gaze, however, to finish stating her one stipulation. "You have to promise me that you will take me at my word without checking me into a psych ward."

Her mother pursed her lips, looking now very disappointed. "You know I always take you at your word. Are you about to give me a reason not to?" she asked severely.

"To your ears, yes, but I'm telling the truth, and I'm not crazy. The proof of both is right here."

"You've got some explaining to do," stated Crackers' mother.

Explain Crackers did. She poured out the whole story to her mother and sister, of Tolkien's visit, the envelope and its powers, and tried to describe the F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Program to them without using the term "plushie." Something within her warned that the elves would not take well to that. She showed her family the tags, the shipping labels, and the envelope (without opening it, of course). She handed her mother a Basic Character Description Sheet from F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. that had come in Eöl's package with the barely audible warning, "Don't read it out loud!"

Crackers' mother quickly scanned the page, appearing to make an attempt at analyzing its authenticity. StarrySea peered over her mom's shoulder, reading the paper with an incredulous expression on her face. Crackers' mother was the one to speak. Her voice was for once dead-serious, and when she locked eyes with Crackers, her daughter knew she meant business. "You have no idea how much I want to believe that you're making all of this up." Here she paused. "But I don't think you are." She paused again. "You might be crazy, but not like this."

For some reason, tears wanted to spring to Crackers' eyes, so great was her relief, but she managed to refrain from crying them, as she did from embracing her mother right then and there. "Thank you, Mom," she answered thickly. "Thank you so much."

"So," interjected StarrySea, speaking slowly, "what are we supposed to, like, _do_ with them? Seriously, what are they for?"

"We _are _standing right here," said Maeglin.

Ignoring the Elf, Crackers answered, "Well, it's supposed to be some sort of wish-granting"- She made a great show of her "air-quotes," not wanting to make things even more awkward with the plushies by revealing her geeky/fangirl obsessions. "—program, and I'm suppose to be with them at all times—"

"Because we can't handle ourselves?" challenged Curufin, looking as though he were trying his utmost not to be insulted by the notion, and as though he were succeeding and questioning her only to intimidate her.

"Because this world can't handle you!" Crackers responded with surprising quickness and a very cheesy smile that meant to be convincing. Turning to her family, she said, "May I introduce you to Eöl…" Eöl just glared. "Maedhros…" Crackers tried not to giggle as she spoke his name. He shook hands with Crackers' mother and StarrySea, as did Fingon, Curufin, and Maeglin, however hesitantly the last two performed the gesture.

Crackers' family stood looking somewhat stunned. Their reaction could only be considered normal. It isn't every Friday night that five men move into one's house for an indefinite amount of time and then shake one's hand as if meeting at church or a party, much less five men, who used to be plushies and who are, in fact, elves.

"So," said Crackers' mother, "they go everywhere that you do?" She directed the question pointedly at Crackers, who at that very moment realized the full implications of that word "everywhere" as regarding her life, and especially the following day. _Oh, shoot, _she thought, not for the first or last time, _I work tomorrow!_

"Um," answered Crackers, the wheels of her brain spinning at a thousand miles an hour yet travelling nowhere, "I think it more refers to that they need"- here she lowered her voice- "constant supervision of _some _sort, which doesn't necessarily refer to me, all the time."

"I have a strange, sick feeling that I know where this is going…" said StarrySea reluctantly.

Crackers' mother pulled her two daughters out of Crackers' bedroom and into the privacy of StarrySea's attached one. The threesome whispered back and forth, hoping to be far enough away from the prying ears and eyes of the elves. Crackers wasn't counting on anything, though, what with superhuman (or was that super-plushie?) elven hearing and all.

"Well," Crackers found herself stumbling over words even with those she was closest to as she struggled to put her request as delicately as possible. "I-I still have to work tomorrow, and they can't- they can't very well go with me! I'm just planning to…"

"Oh, no, you aren't!" said Crackers' mother with a forcefulness saved only for moments of greatest anger. As opposed to shouting whenever she is mad, the lady instead resorts to a low, scary, intense tone that would not be contested; she was using it now. "I am not staying _one minute_ alone with those things. They are _your _responsibility, and _you're _going to pay the consequences for bringing them into our lives. Those five whatever-they-are's can sit just as easily at a table at Chick-fil-A as here at home."

"Mama, please?" Crackers begged, "I can't take them to work with me! I'll get in trouble; I'll be fired!"

"You should have thought of that before you joined this 'F.A.U.L.T.T.Y.' or whatever," her mother replied.

"But can't we at least check the envelope?" tried Crackers.

"I don't care if your weird envelope calls me by name! They're going with you."

_Shoot._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Ai, sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter up! RL's been a bit uppity lately (not bad, just busy); I haven't had a lot of time to write. It might be awhile before I'm able to update again, and I might be less active here on FFn next month, thanks to an amazing writing challenge I'm participating in called Back to Middle-earth Month. Anyway, hope you liked this longer chapter! :)**


	5. My Pleasure?

**Since I began it in March...**

**Bingo #: N32**

**Prompt:** _-Get ready for this.-_ _What did you have for lunch yesterday?_ _(I had had some crackers...)_

Wrapped in her somewhat oversized grey peacoat, Crackers shivered in the harsh January wind. The disagreeable weather, however, was the least of her problems as she stood in the midst of a ring of five terribly attractive elves behind the brick-surrounded dumpster of her employer.

"Okay," she sighed, rubbing her hands together for the cold before withdrawing from her coat-pocket a black wallet bearing a somewhat uncanny resemblance to a pipeweed pouch, along with a small sheet of blue paper and a generic, piece-of-junk phone that pathetically failed to emulate a BlackBerry. "I need you all to wait out here until this-" Here she held up the phone. "-sings. Then, go into the restaurant, follow the lead of the other guests, and read this-" Here she held up the sheet of paper. "-to the team member at the counter."

Maedhros took the phone from her hesitantly, appearing to examine it. "It _sings_?"

Crackers rolled her eyes. "Can't miss it," she replied. "'Billie Jean' will be really loud." If those F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. idiots bothered to teach random plush toys English, driving, and modern self-defense, why on earth wouldn't they have a telephone-use seminar as well?

"_Who_ will be loud?" asked Curufin, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, never mind," she answered quickly, with a glance at her watch: only two minutes until her shift started! She was never running this late...

Crackers proceeded to shove the page and wallet into Fingon's hand. He eyed them quizzically, and that was the last Tolkien's latest victim saw of the Plushies for the next ten minutes.

Crackers emerged at a high rate of speed from behind the dumpster-cubicle and into the zone between trash-disposal and restaurant of the massive parking lot her Chick-fil-A was located in. She dashed in between a row of parked cars, across a gratefully-empty space for driving, up the curb, and beside the metal railing near a chair-less outdoor table. Finally arriving on the concrete porch itself, she nearly trampled an elderly woman and two elementary-aged boys appearing to be her grandsons.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, assuming the overly cheerful and friendly demeanour she reserved almost strictly for work. "I'm so sorry; excuse me!"

Hoping to compensate for her previous carelessness- and to create the "positive impact" aimed for by Chick-fil-A-she smiling opened and held the glass door for the three guests. The boys gave her a strange look, but their grandmother smiled and thanked her.

"My pleasure!" Crackers replied enthusiastically, trying her utmost to keep her voice from becoming too high-pitched. "Welcome to Chick-fil-A!"

Once the guests had entered, she followed them into the small breezeway. With a glance at her feet, she noted the dirtiness of the black rug in the entryway; it was covered primarily in salt from the parking lot tracked in by guests' feet, along with several crumbs, a dead leaf, and a number of unidentifiables. _There's a job for later_, she thought. The grandmother had held the door open behind her for Crackers, and our favourite Chick-fil-A team member slipped in with a grin and, "Thanks!"

Stepping into the actual restaurant, Crackers glanced at the digital clock behind the counter declaring the "official" time. "10:58 AM, 12 seconds" read the beige screen. That left time only to hurry into the kitchen and stow her coat in one of the lockers located therein.

She took a right around the oval condiment bar (observing its depleted stock) and continued forward, then right again, and into the dining room, down the all-but-vacant furthest-back aisle (spotting all-but-the-two occupied tables as simply filthy). The Saturday-breakfast crowd never failed to leave the dining room an utter pigsty; there's nothing like a chicken biscuit to leave behind a greasy, crumbly mess!

Crackers hardly minded, though: She needed lots to do before the hordes of guests craving chicken for lunch arrived. She winced as she made a left into the restaurant's diminutive back hallway, for the nagging thought revealed itself yet again to her mind: _Lots to do aside from keeping five plush elves in check, that is_.

She made another left, bracing herself as she took the three steps need demanded she walk past the ladies' restroom door in case it should open. She quickly entered the kitchen through the door labeled "Employees Only," walked behind a Hispanic woman washing dishes (to whom she pled, "Excuse me!") and over slick, brown tile to the protuberant bit of wall where a bay of narrow columns of square quarter-lockers resided. Crackers hastily slipped her coat off and shoved it into the last empty locker before exiting the kitchen the way she'd come.

Looping back up the aisle in the quiet dining room and this time behind the condiment bar, she arrived at the two tall tables where other team members awaited eleven o'clock beside the entrance to the area behind-counter, chatting amongst themselves. Crackers checked the time again- 10:59 AM, 51seconds. The rest of the patient workers seemed simultaneously to arise from their chairs or shift from their positions; for nine seconds the group stood outside the gap between the counter and a business-kiosk attached to the wall, then at eleven o'clock precisely filed through it and dispersed across the cash registers to clock in.

Crackers waited for but one person to clock in, a petite, blonde girl placed on "headset" for the drive-thru, before punching in her own code, "449135." The team leader (at any other restaurant known as shift manager) standing nearby, Ryan, put in his own PIN to confirm it.

"Thanks," said Crackers, quietly but with a slight smile. "Do you want me on dining room?"

"Yes, please," returned Ryan to the inquiry made before Crackers' each and every shift. In her entire career at the restaurant, which totaled the few months since its opening, Crackers had never done anything but clean the dining room; however, she had a feeling that the one day she didn't ask would be the one day they placed her elsewhere.

But today (to Crackers' slight chagrin) was not that day, so she slipped out from behind the counter and across the wide space for a line of guests between the counter and the three tall windows that peered out into the parking lot and upon a dormant zone of landscaping beside the building.

The supply closet of Crackers' destination, otherwise known as dining room-duty HQ, was to the left of the windows, on the wall's furthest end, and beside a display of nutrition guides and healthy choices on the abutting wall, which, coincidentally, was the other side of the breezeway's left.

At any rate, Crackers opened said closet's door and brought forth a handy green and white package of "Table Turners" wipes, along with a broom and dustpan. She set off down the first of the dining room's aisles with a crossing of the entryway and began work on the first in a row of tall tables with stool-like seats lined up beside a window like the one on the other side of the restaurant. One of Crackers' wipes was quick to lift greasy fingerprints and a few scattered crumbs from the tabletop; once it was immaculate in every way, she carefully swept the floor beneath and around it for trash, food particles, or attractive combinations of both, before crossing the narrow aisle to work her magic on its neighbour parallel it.

She had barely finished this second table and commenced labour on the third when the restaurant's door to which her back was turned, opened to admit five guests, two of whose debating voices Crackers unfortunately recognized. She whirled around, praying the elves wouldn't notice or acknowledge her, and the Lord must have taken compassion, for they didn't. She stopped in her scrubbing at a persistent coffee-stain just in time to hear what was apparently the end of a "heated discussion."

"Well, you're a bigger one!" exclaimed Eöl loudly to Curufin, earning stares from every guest and team member in Crackers' line of sight. It took everything within her not to facepalm.

"Both of you," she heard Maedhros hiss as the elves turned left to face the counter, "just stop. Is it that difficult?"

He was answered by two muttered "yes"'s, but the pair appeared indeed to pause the argument, relegating it instead to a competition of whose stare was the iciest. The other three's eyes, however, were fixed bewildered on the vibrant menu above the counter and the appetizing photos it sported of Chick-fil-A cuisine.

"Welcome to Chick-fil-A!" said a friendly team member named Abigail from one of the cash registers. "I can serve you all over here whenever you're ready."

"Serve us how?" queried Fingon almost suspiciously, as he fingered Crackers' wallet (From this vantage point the F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. participant realized what a stupid idea handing it over to /them/ had been.) and examined the sheet of paper she'd given him.

"Take your order," answered Abigail kindly, but hardly disguising her surprise at such a question.

"All right," replied Fingon with a slight smile, stepping up to the counter with the other four plushies in tow.

"Will you be dining in with us today?" asked Abigail.

Fingon glanced at Maedhros quizzically. _Why didn't you think of this?_ Crackers mentally chastised herself. _Hopefully, they can at least figure this much out, though..._

Fortunately, Maedhros did, and spoke up saying, "I believe so."

"Okay," said Abigail, tapping the register's screen. "And can I get a first name for the order?" She glanced back and forth between Maedhros and Fingon.

_Why didn't you think of THAT?_ thought Crackers.

"Findekáno," said Fingon.

"I won't abide hearing that tongue," muttered Eöl.

"Then, by all means," hissed Curufin in response, "remove yourself from earshot."

A confused expression fell upon Abigail's face. "And how is that spelled?"

"_Formen, newalmë_-" Fingon rattled off mechanically before realizing his mistake and correcting himself, "I'm sorry: F-I-N-D-E-K-A-N-O."

"All right," said Abigail slowly, punching in each letter as he spoke it. "And what can I get for you today, Mr. Fin..." She trailed off, ending lamely, "Sir?"

Fingon unfolded Crackers' sheet of paper and read off of it proudly, "Five original Chick-fil-A sandwich meals with lemonades and fries."

"Yes, sir," said Abigail, eyes on the screen as she hit the correct icons. "Will that be all for you today?"

"Yes," answered Fingon simply.

"And your total comes to twenty-five forty," replied Abigail.

Fingon fidgeted for but a moment with the wallet before opening it and drawing forth first a twenty-dollar bill, seeming to read it, then pulling out and handing to Abigail a ten as well.

Crackers watched no more, and turned instantly back to her table, finishing it before relocating to a spot from which she could direct the Plushies to the dining room's most discreet table. She passed by the rest of that aisle and turned onto the horizontal row of booths and chairs (with tables in between) in front of the indoor playground and made her way into a small alcove adjacent the playplace to clean its three chairs, long expanse of booth attached to the wall around the restaurant's corner, three short red stools, longer tabletop, briefer tabletop, and short children's table.

By the time she finished clearing them of breakfast-grime, elven voices were to be heard close by. Crackers was fairly certain it was Maeglin who said, "Where are we going?" and Eöl who replied caustically, "Away from these arrogant Golodhrim, my son, or we would be if you were anything but a lying, thieving, ill-gotten-"

Fortunately, Crackers chose this moment to make sure that the coast for acknowledging and instructing the plushies was clear, and then to beckon them come into the alcove. They did so, and upon their arrival Fingon and Maedhros, eyeing the food warily, set down two trays loaded with chicken sandwiches in insulated paper bags, waffle fries spilling out of grease-stained boxes, and styrofoam cups of lemonade on the broader of the tall tables, the farthest forward in the alcove.

"Nicely ordered," said Crackers quietly to Fingon with a genuine smile, which he returned in a way that made her knees go ever so weak inside her black uniform-slacks. Turning to the rest, she maintained the same tone as she directed them to, "Sit here, and don't make a scene, whatever you do. Act naturally, and be very inconspicuous- and very patient. This shift lasts four hours, okay?"

"Do you mean to imply our being unnatural?" asked Curufin flatly.

"Only in this restaurant!" Crackers replied with a nervous simper, before continuing, "But can you do that for me? Please?"

"Of course," replied Fingon, seating himself beside Maedhros on the booth side of the table and finding his food on the trays.

"What if we don't?" inquired Curufin, smirking.

Maedhros gave Crackers no chance to answer him, instead shooting his brother a pointed look and saying imperatively, "But we will."

Curufin pulled out a chair in silence, followed by Maeglin who sat beside him and across from Fingon. Eöl moved behind the two chairs to the smaller table, which he scooted as far away from the Golodhrim as possible before seating himself on the booth side.

"Well," said Crackers with an awkwardly cheerful smile, as she picked up her cleaning supplies, "now that that's settled, I'll bring y'all some napkins!"


	6. Of Owning and Operating

The Chick-fil-A was just beginning to attract the lunch crowd. The imminent flood of guests had begun trickling in shortly after Crackers and five dubiously well-behaved elves had arrived, and the hum of conversation was beginning slowly to build in the dining room.

"Excuse me, ma'am," came a voice from Crackers' left. The F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Program victim participant had been hard at work purging of- you guessed it- chicken biscuit crumbs the brown cushion of the adjacent booth-seat connected to the wall, but she looked up upon hearing the query.

Greeted by the wizened face of the woman for whom she had held the door on her way in, Crackers smiled and replied in her clearest, perkiest tone, "How may I serve you?"

In the alcove behind her, one Curufinwë Atarinkë set down his chicken sandwich to watch the exchange, regarding the team member's behaviour with a devious smirk.

"May I exchange these-" The elderly guest held up two very thin paperback storybooks pertaining to some virtue or other; Crackers immediately recognized them as having come from Chick-fil-A kids' meals. "-for ice cream?" She smiled across the table at her grandsons.

Crackers cast a quick glance around the party, analyzing the faces of the threesome, as she did most everyone, in a way that she hoped was inconspicuous. "Of course you may, ma'am!" she replied, gently taking the "prizes" from the lady. "I'll be right back out with your ice creams!"

Halfway back up and around the aisle to the area behind the counter, she realized, _Shoot, I always forget to ask about a cup or a cone! _Rounding the condiment bar and slipping past a tray-bearing co-worker on his way out into the dining room, she walked straight ahead to the right side of the building. The soft-serve machine had (gratefully) not moved any time recently from its spot on the left wall, diagonal from a drive-thru window. She stood on tip-toe to grab the small black dishes for kids' ice creams- better safe with a cup than sorry with a cone- and artfully swirled two servings of vanilla ice cream into them.

On the way back to the guests' table, she stopped by the condiment bar to grab two plastic spoons, soon finding herself placing the decadent desserts in front of two beaming young boys. Three "thank-you"s were heard.

"My pleasure!" Crackers replied, and was immediately back to work on the cushion she had left, picking up her abandoned cleaning supplies when she had finished and proceeding to scour the dining room for a dirty (or at very least, empty!) table to clean.

This was always the boring part of every shift: those awkward times when there were enough guests to fill up all of the tables, but not quite enough to create the steady in-and-out flow of people that would keep the young woman busy cleaning. She inevitably ended up pacing in circles around the dining room, wondering if she ought to do the proper Chick-fil-A thing and take guests' empty trays, trying without success not to make eye contact with anyone, and generally hoping and praying that the customers would leave so that she could wipe up their chicken crumbs. Pathetic, I know, but what better word to describe the existence of our reluctant (hardly-a-) heroine?

At any rate, it was on one of these very laps that Crackers saw a sight that put a knot in her stomach and every sense in her body on red alert: Her boss, a kindly though not overly "warm and fuzzy" man (who frequently made rounds in a full dining room for PR's sake), speaking with five unusual guests in an alcove beside the playplace.

Some good fortune or miracle had it that the booth/table (It was a half-and-half sort of thing.) right across the aisle from said alcove had only just been vacated- and by a family with three toddlers whose delight it had seemingly been to crumble, mash, and throw more of their food than they ate. Crackers couldn't help but smile: this was the perfect project to facilitate nonchalant eavesdropping.

Crackers' boss, Tony, , whom we'll call Mr. Smith, had apparently only just introduced himself as the Owner/Operator of the franchise and asked the elves if they were enjoying their food.

A voice from that direction could be heard suavely responding, "This is our first visit to your fine restaurant, and I'm very much enjoying the food." Crackers was a bit too frightened- and trying to appear not so- to look up from her cleaning and ogle, but she didn't need to do so to recognize the speaker as Fingon.

"Excellent. I am so glad to hear that, sir," replied Mr. Smith. "What about the rest of you gentlemen?"

Crackers heard one "Delicious" –Maedhros, one "I like it"- most likely Maeglin, one grunt- who else but Eöl?- and at last one, "The food is very good, but, if you don't mind my saying it, the service out here in this dining room is somewhat lacking." The soft voice, ever-so-slightly tinted with a smirk, was Curufin's.

Crackers rolled her eyes, but quickly sobered as she realized what had happened: Regardless of the source, her boss had just received a complaint about her. This was not good, especially seeing as the poor thing lived in essentially constant fear of losing her employment. (I know, I know- paranoid much?)

"I'm terribly sorry about that, sir," Mr. Smith was replying gravely. "To make up for that, is there anything that I can bring you?"

Curufin hesitated a moment before Crackers heard the rattle of ice cubes as he apparently pulled the lid off of his cup. "I suppose I could use some more of this… lemonade."

Another rattling could be heard as Mr. Smith took the cup. "Okay, sir, I'll have this right back out to you." Crackers' boss turned away and walked down the aisle in which Crackers was cleaning, going behind her and oblivious, for the moment, of her presence.

As soon as he had passed, she finally looked up, casting as harsh a glare at Curufin as she could muster. He only smirked back, earning a quasi-admonishing glance from his older brother. Crackers, unable to resist doing so, stormed over to the alcove.

"Didn't I make you agree not to be disruptive?" she hissed.

"What is disruptive about answering a man's question?" Curufin responded innocently. "I didn't even have to approach him." Crackers sighed.

"Well, don't do _that_ again, either!" she answered, exasperated. "This isn't a game, okay? This is _my_ job, _my_ life. Please don't ruin either of them."

"And you think being wished away from home and shipped off _here_ isn't enough to ruin a life?" Curufin replied caustically, that increasingly slap-able smirk still across his face.

He had a point there, actually, but, knowing Mr. Smith could return at any moment, Crackers refrained from replying with some excuse or apology and went back to the messy table. A detached thought couldn't help but wonder, _Where is "home" for them, anyway? _Her sensibility couldn't help but add, _And how do I get them back?_

Mr. Smith soon passed behind her again and handed the lemonade back to Curufin. Crackers heard footsteps coming down her aisle once more, not unexpectedly, and whirled around with a sweet, "Hi, Mr. Smith. How are you?" to her boss's call.

"I'm doing fine, Crackers," he said. "Can I remind you to be checking up on our guest every ten minutes or so?"

"Yes, sir," the petrified girl replied. "I'm sorry; I'll definitely remember to do that. I'm so sorry."

"It's all right," he said. "I know that you're pretty busy in here today, and I'm out here doing a lot of that right now. But could you keep a special eye on those gentlemen behind me? This is their first time at a Chick-fil-A."

"Really?" said Crackers conversationally, nodding.

"I'd like for you to let them know that you're available to serve them if there's anything they need."

"Yes, sir," she said, though it took everything within her not to roll her eyes or moan like a child, "Do I _haaave _to?"

"Thank you," he replied, turning away before she could even give him a token "my pleasure" in response.

Shoving the chairs back beneath the now-clean table on the wall, Crackers trudged over to the alcove once more. Mr. Smith was, sadly, still within earshot, so she said with the most "pep" possible, jerking her head in an indicatory fashion toward her boss, "I just wanted to-" Here she briefly pursed her lips. "let y'all know that I'm here to serve you, so just flag me over if there's something you need."

Five sets of elven eyebrows slowly elevated in puzzlement. She yanked her head in Mr. Smith's direction yet again, then glared at Curufin, who only looked the smugger for her icy gaze.

Fingon seemed to understand her cues, and at any rate was not, as was his distracted cousin, in the business of giving Curufin Maedhros' look of "Really?". "Thank you," he replied in a volume that necessitate Mr. Smith's hearing his reply. "We'll definitely keep that in mind."

Crackers smiled gratefully, replying with her signature Chick-fil-A cheer, "My pleasure!" then proceeding to book it to the other side of the restaurant in the general direction of "away." She planned to check the condiment bar; its stock had looked fairly sparse when she'd earlier retrieved the spoons. First, though, she returned to the supply closet to bestow her wipes and broom.

It was when she stood in that narrow doorway, feeling the cold draft of that unheated and diminutive space, that her first brilliant idea of the past twenty-four hours inflicted itself upon the strange mind of our dear Crackers.

_The envelope! _she thought. _I'm sure- well, no, I'm not but it's worth a shot- it knows what to do? _She pulled the very thing out of her Chick-fil-A fleece's right pocket and gave it a quizzical look as she stepped fully into the closet to hide her reading it.

Opening the envelope, she saw, in plain Times New Roman 12-point font on an otherwise blank sheet of printer paper, printed the words, _" '…but more trouble would certainly come before the day was old.' –__The Return of the King__"._

Gee, thanks.


	7. When Life Hands You Lemonade

**All right, here be one of the woes of writing stories longhand: I am often too lazy/busy to type them up! This chapter has been extant since May, but I've only just now gotten around to posting... Anyhow, (try to?) enjoy!**

Having shoved the envelope back into her pocket, out of sight and mind where it belonged, Crackers placed her table-wipes on the supply closet's metal shelving, and her broom and dust-pan against its left wall. The line in front of the counter had grown even in her few seconds in the closet, so she was forced to squeeze through the lengthy queue.

With a high-pitched (and therefore dubiously audible), "Excuse me!" to a plump and grim-looking man who looked ready to eat at least two Chick-fil-A sandwiches- and her, for walking in front of him- landed in front of the oval-shaped condiment bar.

The first thing the stout kiosk brought to Crackers. Attention was the atrocious lack of ketchup packets in the flat compartment on the left. Next to the ketchup's home in a likewise expanse, the mayonnaise was hardly faring better. Losing no time, the team member bent to the cabinets below the condiment-bearing countertop and pulled out a heavy (but also- fortunately!- quite full) box of versatile "dip or squeeze" Heinz packets. She quickly lifted the cardboard sheet beneath the first row of them inside, dumped its contents into their temporary residence, and tucked it through a hole in the counter into a trash can below.

"Sorry!" said a woman, taking a handful of containers as soon as Crackers administered them.

"You're fine," she was reassured. "That's what they're there for!" Crackers put in two more rows (for good measure) before returning the box to the cabinet. She pointed at the mayonnaise for just a second before deciding that it would have to wait: that was one of the condiments whose cardboard-clad bonanza was always an adventure to find. She proceeded to re-stock the other condiments having a mother-lode in the cabinets on this side: straws, hot sauce, kids' placemats, and more ketchup.

Circling around to the other side of the condiment bar, she immediately stooped to bring forth three plastic bags of spoons, knives, and forks, whose stock she'd been able to note as depleted from the other side. (A small shelf stood in the center of the countertop; its top row's contents- or lack thereof- were visible and accessible to both sides, separated by flimsy plastic dividers in their long bed.) She replaced the silverware, moving along to breath-mints (the good, soft kind that she and her sister had taken by the handful as children) and mayonnaise, whose box was located with surprising ease.

Crackers gave the full condiment bar a well-deserved smile; now all that remained to be done was wipe up the sticky rings left behind by soft drinks. Before she could return to the closet, however, she noticed upon turning around, several impatient-looking guests lined up beside the cash-register counter- all with a cup in hand and a lid in the other.

_Yes! _she thought, for "refreshing beverages" during times when the register workers were occupied was a favourite task of hers.

She approached the guest nearest the counter, a young girl of perhaps ten. "You look like you need that refreshed," Crackers said with a smile. The girl held out a kids' size cup whose only contents were ice cubes. "What did you have?" inquired the team member.

"Sprite," was the girl's response.

"All right!" said Crackers, hurrying behind the counter to the first of three soda fountains along it and filling the provided cup with the aforementioned beverage. She dodged behind Abigail, who was still taking orders at the first register, and returned the drink to a quiet, "Thank you."

"My pleasure!" she cheerily replied, turning to the gentleman next in line. Taking his proffered cup and simple clue of "Coke," she asked if he would like more ice.

"Umm, just a little, please."

Fulfilling his request as laid out, his irrepressible gratitude was met with a token phrase that, for the sake of our poor reader's level of annoyance, I'll leave to the imagination.

Five more guests Crackers served in such fashion- those suckers just kept on coming! It was enjoyable to have a task of this much consistency, but with the restaurant in such a busy state of affairs, she could not help but be concerned for the dining room's cleanliness. After sweet tea for one final guest, she thought that the crunch was over; however soon was spotted the approach of two more cups from the dining room.

She inwardly sighed, but the mental expression morphed into a groan when she noted their bearers. Carrying the empty cups and growing steadily nearer her were two impressively handsome men with long, black hair (one's braided back, one's loose), pointed ears, and amusement in their keen, grey eyes.

_Why don't you just run your head through a wall? _griped the majority of Crackers' consciousness. _It'll be less painful! _But this compelling urge was one she managed to resist, and she simpered sweetly on account of the normal and benign guests nearby.

"Aren't you going to ask how you may serve us?" queried Curufin before Crackers had even the chance to speak.

Smile pasted on her visage for observation by stray Owner/Operators and various guests, she said quietly through her teeth, "Judging by the cups, I thought the answer fairly apparent." Raising her voice in not only volume but pitch, she continued, "May I refresh your beverages, sirs?"

Both Curufin and his companion (Who else but Maeglin?) stuck out their cup-bearing hands- without removing the lids; they were the first guests all day not to do so. She mentally thanked the Chick-fil-A personnel who had taken the time to include in the training session so many months ago the proper way to request the following: "Can you take the lids off?" (For "Take your top off, please," would have been considerably worse in this situation than most others she could think of.)

Surprisingly, the elves complied. "Lemonade?" she queried, for the sake of keeping on-looking suspicions as low as possible rather than truly being enlightened. Without offering the kinsmen more ice, she took the cups and slipped behind the counter once more.

Chick-fil-A's hand-squeezed lemonade (No, that isn't just advertising: Crackers had dodged many a bucket of lemon rinds in the kitchen.) was kept on a second counter behind that of the cash registers; a narrow aisle lay between the two. The beverage filled a large plastic dispenser- today- about halfway to the top. Crackers strode up to it, placed one cup on the faux granite to her right, and held the other (Curufin's, she thought) beneath the spigot.

She placed a finger on the "push"-labeled handle that would permit lemonade to make its journey into the cup at hand. Only a tiny trickle flowed forth. _Okay, _mused Crackers, _I'll give you a moment to warm up. _But after thirty seconds of such a spewing, dragged on by impatient tapping of her fingernails against the countertop, she determined that it was plenty warm- yet the lemonade still seemed to be taking its own sweet (or sour) time in coming.

_This will take forever! _she thought, agitated, and decided to take Matters into her own hands. (Poor Matters- they later reported becoming terror stricken at merely that prospect.) Keeping one hand on the handle, she reached up with the other and ever-so-gently reached up with the other, tilting the rectangular keg forward and down.

Success! The lemonade streamed freely from the valve in a mighty rivulet, and the cup was full within seconds. Crackers immediately ceased to press the handle- but such a powerful deluge would not be so easily halted.

Setting the overflowing cup aside, Crackers frantically jiggled the handle, to no avail. The lemonade flowed on, steady and strong as ever, filling the drain below the dispenser and beginning to spill over onto the counter and drip down the front of the cabinets under it. "What do I do? What do I do?" she murmured desperately. She helplessly watched as the counter's surface became unable to hold all of the liquid and even the tile floor was transformed into a puddle by the evacuating beverage. Still fiddling with the handle, and still unable to dam its flood, Crackers was relieved when several other team members flocked to the scene of the crisis.

One of the leaders (Travis, by name) took over at the spigot and, using some magical power that Crackers apparently lacked, managed to stem the tide of sugary beverage with some effort. When he had gone back in to the kitchen to grab a mop, Crackers picked up Maeglin's cup, and pressing lightly and patiently on the handle of the diet lemonade's (unsurprisingly) full dispenser, filled it with such. _He won't know the difference, anyway, _she thought.

Casting a concerned glance at the team members working to soak up lemonade, she hurried over to the side of the counter and thrust the cups toward Maeglin and Curufin.

"Thank you," said Maeglin with a wry smile. He made not even an attempt to banish a snicker from his voice.

"My pl-" Crackers began automatically, tone flat.

She was interrupted by Curufin, who, permanent smirk still on his lips, shook his head and said in a tone suggesting him the bearer of great enlightenment, "I'm fairly certain no one here believes that to have been your pleasure."

Crackers rolled her eyes, then hissed, "Shut up! Take your lemonade and go!"

"I think I will," replied Curufin- contemplatively?- then turned around as soon as Crackers did.

The team member immediately rushed to the back counter once more and pulled down some paper towels to aid in ceasing the drip down the cabinets. When Travis returned with a mop, having departed, naturally, to retrieve one, she apologized with a sheepish grin. "It's fine," he answered. "Stuff happens. Why don't you head back out to the dining room?"

"Thanks," said Crackers, "and I will!" She retrieved her wipes and broom from the closet then did as instructed. She managed to busy herself for the next half-hour in every aisle but the one ending in what she had "affectionately" nicknamed the Alcove of Dread. On a figurative high from having so much work to do (We discussed earlier her level of pathetic-ness, so that idea should not surprise one over much), she was startled to hear a, "Hey" behind her.

Crackers looked up from the booth she had just finished wiping down to see a team member (called Ethan) speaking. "Ryan said you can go on your break now, so I'm taking over for you."

"All right, thank you!" replied Crackers, passing off her cleaning supplies and hurrying off to clock out for her fifteen-minute respite. Behind the counter, she quickly punched in her number and ripped off the receipt confirming her time off. She fixed herself a kids'-size cup of water and retrieved for it a bendy kids' straw from the condiment bar, then convinced herself that checking on the plushies was the right thing to do.

She had made the turn down the correct aisle when she saw that Maedhros had left the alcove and was walking toward her at an impressive pace, attracting many a curious glance as he did so.

When the two met in the middle of the aisle, between two full tables, Crackers started to whisper, "Not out he-"

But she was cut off by Maedhros, on whose countenance was a look of great anxiety. "Crackers," he said severely, "Curufin is gone."


	8. Babysitting Job

"And good riddance!" said Crackers somewhat loudly, at which Maedhros' expression morphed from gravity to sternness in a matter of seconds. The unlikely twosome had already attracted a number of turned heads and curious stares, and the outburst did little to aid the cause against such behaviours.

"You cannot mean-" began Maedhros, but Crackers cut him off with a roll of the eyes, a continuation in her path toward the Alcove of Dread, and the hissed words:

"Let's discuss this where it belongs..."

To Crackers' utmost shock and sudden pride, he followed, if with a sigh masked by the hum, laugh, squeal, and occasional childish shriek, of conversation. The other plushies were but across one aisle- a typically busy thoroughfare leading to the restrooms and kitchen entrance, though momentarily clear- and the two quickly reached it. Fingon looked up with a genuine- if melancholy- smile, Maeglin with a smirk attempting to hide confusion, and Eöl with half a waffle fry in his hand and a quizzical scowl (strikingly similar to his son's, Crackers knew better than to comment) on his face.

Two empty spots were at the Noldorin table; Crackers cast a quick glance between the two, not particularly wanting to climb behind Maeglin and take Curufin's one-time spot, when she was left no choice by Maedhros, who sat down by Fingon once again. Glumly, she squeezed between the back of Maeglin's chair and the window into the play area and plopped down on the red faux-leather of its cushion, clutching her small cup of water convulsively.

"What exactly happ-" she started, but Maedhros needed nothing more as catalyst.

"Everything seemed perfectly normal when Atarinkë returned with Maeglin. They were grinning at each other, and when I asked what was so amusing they wouldn't say-"

"With good reason," Maeglin muttered in interruption.

"Atarinke appeared to drink his lemonade for... oh, how long do you think it was, Kano?"

"Five minutes at the most," said Fingon with a severe nod.

"And then he got up with his drink, said something about needing a napkin; we didn't see him again until Kano chanced to look out the window-" Maedhros pointed to the large window forming the back corner of the alcove. It provided a spectacular view of the drive-thru lanes and the busy road the Chick-fil-A lay on. "-and saw him walking away from the restaurant."

Crackers, who had- despite compulsions relating to quick drinking- been wiggling the bendy top of her straw back and forth throughout the Feanorion's tale- and therefore assuredly not drinking- suddenly let go of it. Her (debatably) blue-grey eyes grew wide, and her once-fidgeting hands dropped useless onto the tabletop. "You're joking," she sighed.

Maedhros shook his head. "Do you think I would jest about such a matter as this? My younger brother has just gone missing in a foreign country, putting both himself- and potentially this city-" he added in an undertone, "in great danger. Come, we have not a moment to lose in finding him!"

Crackers rolled her eyes, put her be-ponytailed head in her hands, and moaned, "But I can name quite a few things we will lose if we do..."

A voice was suddenly heard from Crackers' right, barely audible for its quietness and distance. "Dignity and sanity not least among them," remarked Eol.

The beleaguered writer nodded her agreement, casting a grateful smile in the Dark Elf's direction.

"What sanity, in the case of you twain?" Maeglin muttered.

Maedhros sighed. "I do not see where there is aught to debate. He is my brother, the kinsman (if by bonds no nearer than race) of all here save one, that one of whom he is the guest." He rose. "Let us go at once!"

"I am with you," said Fingon, standing likewise, if somewhat more reluctantly.

"I never spoke against you." Maeglin shrugged, and stood.

Maedhros looked pointedly back and forth from Crackers to Eol. "Well?" he inquired. "Will you not accompany us?"

"Yes, um, well, yes," stuttered Crackers in reply, "but sit down a moment! I can't very well go running off after miscreant plu- elves!- in the middle of my shift. I'd be fired! I'm sorry, your noble quest will have to wait another..." She glanced down at her watch. "...hour and a half. Sorry!" The final word was little more than an inane squeak in the dining room's buzz.

"Another hour and a half?" Maedhros' tone was more frustrated than dubious.

"It isn't very long... and, ah-"

"He has already been gone one hour! How long do you expect me to tarry?"

"Already gone an hour..." Crackers repeated dejectedly, head sinking back into her open palms. All the damage that could have been done... And what would happen if they took him to prison...?

"All right, all right," she conceded, looking up as her mind ensnared a rare plan of action. "Which of you has my cell phone?"

"This?" Fingon pulled the overpriced piece of junk out of his pocket.

"Yes, that," she sighed, "and now what I want you all to do is this, if you don't mind... Could you all, uh, step out of the building, please? Act like you're leaving and go stand behind the dumpster- where we were earlier- again. Then when you're there I want you to..." She fumbled for the pen in her pocket and snatched the elves' receipt up off the table. "...put in this number." She underlined where it was printed under the restaurant's address, and flipped the receipt over. "You'll probably talk to Ryan. Tell him this: that there's been a... family emergency... and you need to speak with me immediately. I (think I) can handle things from there." She outlined the point onto the back of the receipt. "Will you do that for me? Please?" she ended weakly.

"You don't have to come with us, you know..." asserted Maeglin innocently.

_The F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Program is not responsible for damage incurred upon your person, your property, or your general surroundings due to misuse of your plush toys: you are. Seeing as you become liable for them, you are also strongly cautioned to keep them within your sight at all times._

"Really," said Crackers, suddenly blanching to recall the envelope's first words, "I think I do."

"Wonderful," said Fingon amiably, "we'll more than likely need someone familiar with this land to aid us."

Crackers smiled, then turned her head toward Eol. "Go on, then," she timidly implored.

"Why?" was the reply. "Why in Middle-earth would I have any desire whatsoever to find that individual- and with you lot, as well? No, thank you, I am more than content to sit here until you return."

"Grant him his wish," said Maeglin, shrugging once again.

Crackers shook her head vehemently, then rose herself to whisper to the Sinda, "Look, if you come with us and cooperate, I'll let you... er, you'll be the first to slap him upside the head when we find him. Come on, you know you've always wanted to."

Eol pursed his lips, appearing to weigh the options momentarily. "Only if I get to do it twice."

"As often as you like!" The poor girl simpered uncomfortably as Eol stood also. Grabbing her cup of water, she hastily slipped away from the huddle of plushies and headed toward a pair of tall two-seater tables with stools clear on the other side of the dining room and next to the front windows. She pulled out a stool, climbed into it, crossed her legs, and began glumly to sip her water, determined not to stare at the party of elves as they made their way through the dining room.

For around a minute, Crackers saw nothing of them until they had headed out the front doors and were making way in silence toward the dumpster. She silently prayed that no one would be wheeling the trash out for the next several minutes. Her water was soon reduced to air against ice cubes, and she tossed the cup out in the nearby trash can.

The blue Timex declared she had two minutes left on break; she made an unwise decision as to how to spend it. She pulled the envelope out of her fleece's pocket once more, and opened it to remove a child's thank-you card, as for a birthday party, the kind that drove her crazy even when she had been of the age to receive them. "Dear blank, Thank you for the blank. That was so nice. Your friend, blank." So thoughtless and impersonal. (Her mother had always made her handwrite hers, so la- di- da.)

This one was filled in. "Dear F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. Participant," read the Buzz-Lightyear-printed cardstock, "Thank you for the participation in our experiment. (And for turning this card over, you imbec- Crackers.) That was so nice. Your friend, F.A.U.L.T.T.Y."

It took everything within her not to let her head fall to the tabletop, but she- not without a terrible grimace- flipped the card over. Her groan was quite audible to read, scrawled in smeared orange gel-pen, _'"If I understand aright all that I have heard," he said, "I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo, and that if you do not find a way, no one will."' -The Fellowship of the Ring._

Thanks, Elrond.

Out of time, she shoved the card back into the envelope, and the envelope into her pocket yet again, and made her way to the counter to clock back in. She did so, and found Ryan on the phone.

"Yes, sir. My pleasure."

Crackers was caught in the middle of her stroll to the condiment bar close by. A tap on the shoulder heralded the words, "There's a gentleman wanting to talk you; he says there's some kind of emergency."

"Oh," the team member replied, attempting to contort her expression into one of concern as she took the phone from her manager. "Thank you," she said to Ryan, and stepped behind the counter with a "Hello?" into the phone.

"Crackers?" She thought the voice was Fingon's. "We're calling, just like you said."

"Oh, Mister... Underhill!" exclaimed Crackers. "What's happened?"

"What?"

"Mm, m-hm. He's gone? Oh, no, that's awful."

"You know Curvo is gone. What in Arda is wrong with you?"

"Of course. Oh yes, sir, as soon as I can get off."

"Ah, you have to say what will convince them..."

"Yes, I do. Of course; I'll see what I can do. See you soon. Bye!"

She hung up and turned to Ryan, who was looking at her with some concern. A knot had formed by now in her stomach- she hated to feel like a liar, and almost as much to ask for favours from her employers. "Ryan?" she said. "There's a really awful situation with... a little boy I babysit; he's gone missing. And the family needs my help to find him-" She swallowed. "-right now. Is there any way...?"

Ryan nodded slowly. "Sure, sure, I completely understand," he said gravely. Crackers breathed a sigh of relief. "You can go ahead and clock out if it's urgent."

"Oh, it is," she returned with all the emotion the circumstances had forced upon her. "Thank you so, so much!"

"My pleasure," her boss replied. "I hope you all find him."

"Me, too." And with that, she turned to the nearest register and punched in her code once more. She ripped off the small ticket printed with the time- 1:44- and strode back to the kitchen through the swinging door behind the counter. The terrible team member took her coat from the locker she had bestowed it in earlier and headed back out into the front of the restaurant.

As soon as she was out from behind the counter, she shrugged the pea-coat on over her fleece jacket and was out the first set of doors, through the breezeway, and exposed to all the fierceness of January in a matter of seconds.

The driver of a car prepared to pull out in front of the curb she stood on, beckoned her go ahead; she waved her gratitude and darted out into the parking lot. Out of the driving space and between several rows of parked cars she walked, until the concrete cubicle housing the dumpster was close before her.

Behind it, she found four tall, long-haired men (and no traumatized Chick-fil-A team members bearing garbage carts). "I made it," she said with a shiver and a forced smile.

"So," said Maeglin, "where to?"

"I have no id-" began Crackers, but stopped mid-sentence, reaching into her fleece's pocket once more. Out came the envelope. Ere opening it, she pointed left. "Didn't you say he went that way?"


	9. Welcome to Wally World

'"..._Curufin rested a while near to the western eaves of Doriath..._" -The Silmarillion' proclaimed the reverse of a grocery list scrawled on a well-loved piece of stationery printed with the profound adage, "_Life is just a chair of bowlies."_

In a matter of seconds, Crackers' plain visage immediately cycled through a full album of expressions. Confused frown, dumbstruck gape, nauseous wince, and idiotically toothy grin, all were soon ousted by a miffed grimace telling Fingon that all was not well with the Envelope.

"May I ask what it says...?" he inquired somewhat cautiously, taking a small step closer to our befuddled heroine.

"Absolutely," she replied, not without a hint of sarcasm. Passing the sheet of paper to the elf, she added, "Care to interpret?"

Maedhros moved to peer over his cousin's shoulder- at his height it was not a difficult feat- and Maeglin followed suit. Crackers was just hoping she would not have to explain the "chair of bowlies" sentiment (As a matter of fact, she couldn't), as Fingon began to read aloud.

"'Curufin rested a while near to the western eaves of the land of the fence,'" he said proudly, then looked pointedly at Crackers. Handing her back the paper, he nodded once. "There you are."

She smiled placidly. "I know what Doriath means; the question is how that will help us..."

"The meaning," answered Maedhros gravely, "is quite clear: when we go to the land of the fence, Curufin will be resting on the western eaves-"

"I can't exactly get us to Dor-" began Crackers, but Feanor's eldest only continued over her.

"Therefore, we need to find the nearest equivalent of the land of the fence," he finished, sounding somewhat annoyed. "Seeing as you know this country well, Crackers, I take it you will be the one in charge of navigation."

"And isn't _that_ a comforting thought?" muttered Eöl from a few chilly feet away from the girl in question.

She resisted an enticing urge to stick her tongue out in his direction, instead settling to turn to the others and say through chattering teeth, "I- well, I don't exactly pay attention to fences... But I suppose you all-" She corrected herself with a sigh. "-I mean, we should just walk until we see a fence, and then when we do, check the west side for Curufin?"

"Impressive," remarked Maeglin sardonically. "I could have invented that brilliant plan."

Maedhros shot his second cousin a glance that Crackers read to say, _I realize she's a moron, but we're all at her mercy, so it's best you hold your tongue. _What he said aloud was, "All right, let us go then!"

With that, the party emerged from behind the dumpster's brick cubicle and crossed a narrow space of emptying parking lot to land on the sidewalk that, in order to proceed down the street, forced one to walk directly in front of the Chick-fil-A. _Here goes my job_, thought Crackers dolefully as they passed.

Though the lunch crowd had finally begun to thin out, four cars waited for service in the Drive-Thru lane. A few kids were running wild on the indoor playground, whose position facing the road, behind transparent glass, gave passers-by a clear view of the adventures transpiring within. Despite the playplace's reputation for belligerent air-conditioning, Crackers could not help but envy the children- and just about everyone else with access to heat at the moment- as the cold January wind forced its way through all three of her layers of clothing.

She had a low tolerance for the cold, which left her quite miserable, and therefore very sorry for herself, so sorry, in fact, that she found herself unable to do anything but stare glumly at the sidewalk beneath her feet. _Darn good thing I'm in my work shoes; they're... nice for walking._ She attempted to put on her optimist hat, but the cheery yellow thing was stiff from disuse and stank of mothballs. _Yeah, but they have non-slip soles, so there's no chance that you'll fall and be put out of your misery._

Thus did the five parade down the left side of the busy road. It was a crowded, four-lane thoroughfare, lined on either side with the strip malls and restaurants of suburbia. On this fine winter's afternoon, four Plush elves and their reluctant victim were the only pedestrians to brave its sidewalks. But there was really no better option; transporting Crackers and the five to work had taken multiple trips in the family sedan, and Crackers was far from keen on bothering her poor mother to bring it out again.

Recalled from gloomy thoughts by voices and the end of the sidewalk, our F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. participant glanced about for the proper pole and, finding it, pushed the proper button beneath the orange hand. There they stood, waiting for the corresponding light across the street to turn into a little walking man.

"I have yet to spot a single fence on either side of this road," Fingon remarked to Maedhros. "What sort of frivolous people does not even take consideration to protect their own?"

"I don't know," replied the Fëanorion with a wry smile, "but I have a strange feeling that by the time Curvo is finished here a good many of them will rethink their strategy."

The traffic light turned red, and the "WALK" signal appeared. The four were soon past the intersection and on the left side of the street once more. In front of this strip mall, there was, alas! no sidewalk, only sallow grass declining into a ditch. It took really more care than Crackers was keen on exerting not to topple off the slope and into the rut. Just as she was about to suggest, "_Hey, why don't we cross the street and watch for fences from level ground?"_, Maedhros stopped in his tracks, pointing diagonally across the street with a grave expression on his handsome features.

"The Land of the Fence," he breathed, with all the admiration of movie!Scottish!Gimli for "_the walls... of Moria_."

With a final glance at her feet, Crackers steadied herself and, wincing, lifted her gaze. Her eyes followed Maedhros' indicative finger to the fence containing the closed-for-the-winter gardening section of the Walmart across the road.

The company simply stood there, gazing partially in awe and partially in concern as Crackers thanked her (pathetically few) lucky stars that at least it was the nice Walmart out here almost to Middletown and not the gangsta-swag-cream-of-the-neighbourhood-crop-fo'-hundred-arrests-a-year-fo'-shizzle-"Naw-Orificer-Bubba's-buyin-me-a-ber"*****-Walmart nearest her house.

Maeglin's low voice cut through her thoughts. "Are we going to stand here and plot strategy, or are we going to cross over and try to find him?"

"Cross over, of course!" "Unfortunately, the latter," chorused Maedhros and Fingon respectively.

"Well, what are we waiting for, then?" was the reply. "The traffic seems to be slowing." Sure enough, it was; even without a "WALK/DON'T WALK" sign a red light for the cars in the nearest lane was enough to permit the busy road to be crossed.

"Come on, then," said Maedhros, stepping off the curb and making to weave his way through the mass of idling cars. Maeglin, Fingon, and Crackers followed him, leaving Eöl still loitering above the ditch.

Ere setting foot on the street, Crackers whirled around. "Aren't you coming?" she said to Eöl- said, because there really could be no question about it. Beside the fact that she had essentially been forbidden to let him out of her sight, she was not about to leave him in such close vicinity to the Chuck-E-Cheese in the strip mall behind. Eöl plus a noisy room full of cut-throat juvenile gamers could only equal disaster.

"If you insist," he answered with a sickly smile and a sigh.

With that, the two were hot on the heels of the other Plushies, and had soon found their way to the narrow grassy median between the two sides of traffic. Patience soon yielded a break in the flow of cars long enough to dash across the road, landing them safely in the parking lot of O'Charley's, which was, coincidentally, in the parking lot of Walmart.

"You do realize," mused Fingon as the troupe began to make for the store across a sea of parked cars, "that the eaves of your fence appear to be on the east, not the west, side of that building?"

"Yes, Findekáno," answered Maedhros with exaggerated patience. "But if we consider the fenced-in area to be 'the Land of the Fence,' all that we must do is find the western eaves of that, which should simply be elsewhere inside the store."

Crackers made a quick mental trip through the Walmart, visualizing the layout of the store to determine which department Curufin would be "resting" in. She did not often shop at this location, but she was fairly confident that the seasonal and toys sections were nearest the entrance to the outdoor gardening area.

"And then from there all we'll have to do is persuade him to join us again..." Fingon's sarcasm was just present enough to earn a snort from Eöl.

"Which should be about as easy as convincing any of the Golodhrim to make any intelligent decision," remarked the Dark Elf.

Maeglin narrowed his eyes. "Or as easy as getting your father to admit he's an overbearing-"

"Oh, look!" exclaimed Crackers somewhat nervously. "It's snowing." And it was. A few delicate flakes had begun to dance their way down from the ashen sky. Wordlessly, the five picked up their pace considerably, now making at full speed for the store's sets of automatic doors.

Only receiving the single-fingered salute from one driver ere reaching the entrance, the group burst into the airlock. Crackers breathed a sigh of relief, immediately slipping her hands out of her coat-pockets to rub them together in the warmth. The light coating of snowflakes on everyone's clothing soon melted, leaving a delicate layer of droplets that soon evaporated.

Another set of automatic doors slid open- to another look of surprise from the elves- and bright fluorescents hanging far overhead, along with an elderly woman bearing a return-sticker gun like a deadly weapon, ushered them into Walmart.

The Plushies' eyes widened, soaking in every detail of the department store; to their immediate left were bins of colourfully wrapped snack foods bearing sale prices; ahead were kiosks upon kiosks of fresh fruits and vegetables; on the right was a long and frustrated line of customers awaiting service. Such an assault of colours and brands and people and technology was more than they had yet beheld in any life.

However, Crackers led the way, beckoning them walk forward with a murmured, "Think it should be this way." They soon took a left between a large bay of shopping carts and a section of seasonal items.

"'Valentine's Day. February 14th,'" read Fingon ruminatively. "'I love you.' 'Be mine.'" His brow furrowed in confusion ere smoothing with a look of realization. He turned to Crackers, "You have a day set aside to celebrate love?"

The authoress nodded. "Essentially. Don't you elves have something simil-" She stopped herself and shook her head. "Never mind. 'Begetting day' equals birthday. Right."

Fingon and Maeglin shared a shrug and a glance that said, _I'm choosing to ignore that._

Maedhros, meanwhile, was barreling straight ahead past checkout lines and the women's clothing department, seeming exclusively focused on finding the fabled "western eaves." The others hurried after him, and in a matter of two minutes had crossed nearly the entire length of the store.

Toys (signaled by a sky-high bin of immense rubber balls) were dead ahead, jewelry was to the right, and yet more Valentine's Day merchandise was to the left when they reached the clearing (of sorts) behind which lay the locked doors leading to the fenced-off gardening department. At the moment, low, temporary shelving units filled it with the pink and red packages of heart-shaped candies.

But Maedhros was oblivious to them, emotionally exclaiming, "Curvo!" and dashing across the space toward a tall, black-haired figure leaning against the wall belonging to the gardening-doors.

The other four walked more slowly behind him, Eöl muttering something about, "I think... in an accursed soap-film... English language curriculum..." He was ignored, though, by Fingon, Maeglin, and Crackers, who noticed something terribly alarming as Maedhros greeted his brother. Curufin was not moving; he was standing, yes, smirking, yes, but had not moved an inch from the wall- or even blinked an eye.

"He-" stuttered Maedhros as soon as they arrived, "he's- back in traveling form. They... they swore it was only a bit of sedation and that we would wake up and never return to... this condition."

Crackers ran disbelieving eyes up and down the plush figure. Same braided hair and black clothing, same arrogant smirk and sharp features: he could have easily been an attractive, animate being. Reaching out a hand (for seeing is contemplating, but touching is believing), she squeezed his wrist. The cotton-y stuffing filling the ivory cloth compressed beneath her fingers. No way.

"Well then," she foolishly remarked, "this is a pleasant surprise."

***This quotation is a sample of an English dialect that could be referred to as Hillbillese and is translated as follows: "No, Officer. My brother is only purchasing me an adult beverage."**

**A/N: I'm so terribly sorry for the gap in updates! It's been a busy few months... *sigh* Hopefully this will not happen again! Thanks for reading so faithfully, and drop in a review, if you so desire. :)**


	10. Only One Dragon: That's Green

"_Well, then. This is a pleasant surprise."_

To Crackers' indescribable relief and delight, Maedhros made her no reply but a glance (if one most disdainful), turning instead to Fingon and Maeglin as if for advice.

Fingon- who, it seemed to our experimentee, did his utmost to quickly suppress a smile- shifted his weight uncomfortably before clearing his throat. "What do you propose we do, cousin?"

"I... I should like to know why. Discovering the cause should- hopefully- lead to the solution? He must be revived, and before that be removed from the store..." The copper-haired Noldo placed his hand to his forehead and began murmuring most vehemently in Quenya.

"Don't be so vulgar in a public place!" hissed Fingon, peering about apologetically. Crackers smiled at him and shrugged her incomprehension.

"It's all right," put in Eöl (who had now crossed the scuffed white tile to join the party's more concerned members). "He brings out the worst in all of us."

Maeglin smirked. "I thought you couldn't understand the tongue of Kinslayers..."

"Ahem. I... picked up a few phrases from your mother. Most regrettably."

"If aimed toward you, it doesn't surprise me at all that they were those sort."

"Gentlemen, please!" Maedhros' present tone levied attention; the sparring pair stifled their irresolvable quarrel. "There are far more important matters to hand than your stale insults, and I must request your silence." After two mumbled yes-sir's, he continued, "Crackers, will not your envelope shed some light on our predicament?"

"I have my doubts..." the authoress muttered, but slipped the now-battered thing out of her fleece's pocket once more. Its opening revealed a 3"by 5" index card. On one side, the card was coated in penciled mathematical formulas and rules, written in- had Crackers yet bothered to notice- her own curly and compact hand. The other also bore letters of her own fashion.

"_What_?" said Crackers on reading them.

Maedhros repressed a huff of annoyed breath and twisted a condescending smile onto his lips. "May I?" he inquired, voice overly controlled.

"Go right ahead," the girl answered, extending the note-card to him without a qualm in the world. As Maedhros examined it, flipping it to the side clean of equations with an "a_ha_" she became quite disturbed. "Wait," she murmured, "I didn't write tha- How?" She sighed; this was really to be expected.

"'..._and straightway he fell under the dreadful spell of the dragon,_'" Maedhros proclaimed aloud after a few seconds, "'_and was as one turned to stone.' -Narn i Chîn Húrin_"

"Dragon?" said Fingon dubiously. His cousin but nodded. "I had no idea they were to be found in this land... That's quite a troubling turn of events."

"No worries!" replied Crackers quickly. "They aren't- well, usually, that is... I mean, no, they don't live here, but... neither do any of you all. Oh, never mind." She blushed, ambiguously-coloured eyes shutting as she realized the implications of her words. _Impossible_, as it turns out, was rather a friendly term, after all.

"Sounds as if there are worries, then," remarked Eöl helpfully.

Fingon spoke up gravely, "Though I have never, in fact, slain one, I have had some limited experience with the Urulóki in the days of Glaurung, and should my (albeit rusty) skills be of assistance, I offer them."

"Thank you, Fin-" Maedhros began; however, he was interrupted by the sound that brings the hills to life: music.

"_I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burnin' love; I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burnin' love_..." Mr. Presley belted out from, well...

"I wouldn't have pressed it, had I known," Maeglin apologized.

For once, Crackers drew an immediate conclusion. "Don't look at its eyes!" she exclaimed, rushing over to cover the thing's head with an icy hand.

It, of course, was one of those atrocious singing stuffed animals so often found in any store's Valentine's Day department. Some wear clothes; some bear microphones. All, though, are activated by the push of a small button; all will drive one to the brink of insanity with remarkable velocity.

This particular horror was in the fashion of a great, green (not a green, great) dragon, in the nude, whose polyester scales were the colour of Brussels sprouts, and who spouted (likewise) polyester orange flames from a heart-shaped maw. It gyrated beneath Crackers' palm to the rock-n-roll rhythm. Under normal circumstances, our heroine may have thought it quite clever. These circumstances, however, were far from such.

The dragon's position, on a low shelf among other gifts of that obnoxious variety, lent itself to easily be turned around so as to avoid eye contact with the Plushies; Crackers swiftly did just that, and sighed in relief.

"What. Is. That?" Fingon's kingly gaze demanded answers.

"Just a stuffed toy." Crackers laughed nervously. "Supposed to be funny on Valentine's. Clearly not. Heheh." She beamed.

"Well," said Maedhros, who was, for one, not seeing the humour, "we know what reverted him, but this-" He looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head and smiling grimly. "-oh, this is just ridiculous. But-" He turned his eyes back to the company. "-at least we've solved our puzzle. Now all we have to do is determine what will revive him."

"We could just make him look in its eyes again; maybe that will reverse the process?" suggested Maeglin.

Maedhros nodded slowly. "It's worth an attempt. Crackers, go ahead."

Muttering something about "_overworked and under-appreciated_" Crackers (who always took unnatural amounts of delight in feeling sorry for herself and subsequently turning herself into some sort of suffering saint) lifted the dragon's box from the shelf, hand still over its eyes, and marched the few paces toward Curufin.

She raised the object to his face, uncovered its eyes, and waited.

To the eyes of a passing elderly gentleman, the scene looked beyond bizarre. He had just picked out Barb's favourite Valentine's candy (Whitman's toffee sampler, if you must know) and looked upon Crackers and (Doubtful) Friends with amusement. "Those kids..." he murmured with a dry laugh. Approaching the hopeful party, he could not resist a quip. "Attacking him with it, are we?"

Crackers, caught off her guard, only grinned in response. The gentleman carried on, shaking his head in amusement; he left behind four animate elves, one disappointed Tolkien nerd, and a Plush figure to match.

Maeglin sighed, glancing at Maedhros. "It was worth a try, at least."

"So it was." Maedhros' tone suggested that his mind's current location was two stars to the right and straight on till morning. He continued to muse, "It would make sense... that he would be revived in the same way that (Is it Túrinn?) was in the _Narn i Chîn Húrin_. Yes. Yes, that's logical."

Fingon had been dropping some eaves (not, like Sam, cutting the grass under the window). "I'm afraid I'll be no help in that endeavour. Eol and I can relate on this one." He shot a bemused glance at his brother-in-law, who also **_SPOILER ALERT!_** dies before Chapter 21.

Quick Deduction (How fair-weather a friend! -Yet I do hear he brings one all manner of sweet things, that is, when he feels inclined) told Crackers that Maeglin and Maedhros might be of little help on such a topic. So she began mentally to review the tragedy of Hurinioni, then to rattle off her geekery aloud.

"At this point (Nargothrond, I believe!), Turin recovers when Glaurung- I hate that stupid Dragon- releases him. But can a little, dancing, plush-" She suddenly burst out laughing in a fit of delighted hysterics. "I get it; I _get_ it!" she exclaimed through giggles. "So ironic... plush elves, plush dragon. That's wrong- wrong!"

She continued laughing for a minute and forty-eight seconds longer, until the impatient elves could no longer bear the annoyance. Maedhros loudly cleared his throat. "If you please," he said, and the girl swallowed her amusement. "Thank you." He elaborated, "It sounded as if you were just beginning to advance in your recollections."

"Of course." Crackers nodded fervently. "Though I don't quite know how that sort of Dragon could release him... But there's also another time when Túrin's a bit senseless; then it's Glaurung's death that awakens him."

"Which sort of enchantment do you propose this is, Russandol?" spake Fingon to his cousin.

"How should I know?" was the aggravated reply. "But it seems that killing the thing would revive him, either way."

"What about Crackers' envelope?" put in Maeglin. "Shouldn't it- help?"

Maedhros handed the index-card back to Crackers, and she slipped it into the envelope, folding over the white pocket's flap and waiting. After several seconds, she re-opened it and removed a page torn out of _Quenta Silmarillion_.

Highlighted in orange was half of a sentence: "_For when the Dragon died, his swoon left him..."_

"Maedhros," said Crackers gravely, "you're quite right." She passed the sheet to the Elf, thinking all the while how odd it was that he should hold a page out of the very book that birthed him.

"It seems I am," he declared almost immediately, handing the page around the group to nods, and even an, "_I should like to see_" from 2-Kewl-4-U Eöl.

All eyes were soon upon Fingon, scholar in all matters scaly, combustible, and foul. "Well," began the one-time High King, "I highly doubt that we would be able to destroy this thing here and now, so it seems our best course of action to first remove it- and Curvo- from the store. And don't look at _me_ for ideas on that!"

"Well, he's rather a one-of-a-kind item, so I don't think they're selling any of him," said Maeglin. "What would keep us from just walking out the door with him?"

"The stares, the questions," muttered Crackers, commencing a rather animated chat with herself. "'Say, what are y'all doing carrying that corpse out of here?' 'Need an ambulance?' 'Shoplifting! Call the cops! Arrest them! Beat them! Bite them!'"

Eöl sighed, rolling his eyes in disdain. "Finished?"

Crackers shot him a glare that quickly (and perhaps wisely) morphed itself into a spurious smile. "Quite."

Maedhros and Fingon had apparently ignored her.

"Just carrying him out the door would attract a fair amount of attention."

"As would trying to buy him if they don't sell him."

Maedhros nodded. "This leaves us only one option, which would be to- somehow- sneak him out of here, probably enclosed within something with us or on us."

"We can't exactly just slip him under our coats," Maeglin pointed out. "He's a bit bulky for that."

"Which is why that is not what I'm suggesting!" Maedhros smiled. "Crackers?"

"Hm?"

"What do you know of, in this store, that we could purchase as a-" Here he lowered his voice considerably. "-disguise, shroud of sorts, that wouldn't draw very much attention?"

Crackers was silent for a moment, surveying Curufin's six-feet-odd height, mentally touring the store's every department in search of something sufficient. "Aha!" she exclaimed, at last locating her object. "A suitcase- that will do nicely, since the plush is flexible and all. I think I have enough cash and gift cards..."

Maedhros' brow furrowed; an expression of some repulsion crossed his features. (But how would you feel if you had just been told that you needed to wad your younger brother up and stick him in a suitcase?) Yet after some moments of consideration, he conceded, "I suppose that is the best way. But how do you think we're going to get him to a suitcase- much less get him into one- without making a bigger scene than we would walking out the door?" He cocked a shapely eyebrow.

"Umm, quickly," said Crackers, "very quickly."

At the moment, the somewhat broad aisle between the Walmart's seasonal and jewelry section was empty. _It's a sign_! decided Crackers, knowing that the accessories/luggage department was only just behind the jewelry.

Taking up the stuffed dragon (eyes again blindfolded by her hand), Crackers glanced around at the elves. "Pick him up, and follow me."


	11. Pack Your Bags

It was red, that suitcase, a vibrant hue of crimson to match Crackers' _Chick-fil-A_ fleece jacket. In hindsight, red was not the best choice; red was an eye-catcher, a warning, a flying tomato, a giant, flashing arrow that shouted, "Look, everyone; there's something to see here!". The worst of Crackers' problems was that there was.

At the moment, however, aforementioned loud suitcase gaped open from its position between the four elves huddled around it in the floor of the luggage-aisle. Its inner lining was grey- an inconspicuous colour- which was a blessing because everything else about the situation attracted attention like toast's buttery side inevitably does the floor.

"Now," Fingon directed from his hands-off position to the suitcase's left, "try his head again."

"I appreciate your insight, Findekáno," Maedhros sweetly replied through gritted teeth. The copper-haired Noldo folded Curufin's plush head inward along the suitcase's horizontal side. It sprang back out for the fourth time today, leaving no room for it on top of the fabric limbs that already spilled out the sides of the case.

"You could always try twisting the neck around." Eöl's visage was deadly serious. "It'll make things easier for all of us when he wakes."

Fingon stifled a chuckle and nod of agreement, swallowing as he ignored his unfortunate brother-in-law.

"Just try it!" the Sinda insisted, adding with sing-song rhythm, "I know you won't be sorry..."

Crackers, pacing from one end of the aisle to the other on "the first watch" (said Maedhros), rolled her eyes miserably up at the high shelves of (save the red) blandly coloured luggage. After the Elves' second failed attempt to conceal Curufin, she had suggested that someone sit on the case's lid to hold it closed while someone else zipped it.

Maedhros' horrified look, succeeded by, "_How would _you_ like to be sat upon?_!" had ended that edition of _Helpful Tips from Crackers_. (She hadn't quite the nerve to ask him how _he'd_ like being shoved into a suitcase.)

At any rate, she remained the group's sentinel, pacing to and fro as the elves continued to argue. The hollow thunk-clunk of her bulky shoes against the floor's linoleum began to wear on her nerves almost as much as did the hushed conversation surrounding the case of Curufin.

"Try it this way..." "No, not like that- tuck his head between his legs." "Turn him this way." "Perhaps on his back?" "No no, the other way; the fetal position seems best." "Try closing it." "Uncle, what do you call this thing?" "The... flipper, I believe." "Well, the flipper is about to break." "Stop flipping, then, for the Valar's sake!"

It was at this particular moment that Wanda began to approach, according to the lopsided letters on her nametag beneath, "25 Years of [here lies a black blob] Service."

The grey-haired woman wheeled a sizable dolly of pilot cases toward our Plushies and Friend(?) from the opposite end of the long aisle. Crackers had just turned on her heel to commence another trip in Wanda's direction, but she froze in her steps on seeing the approaching dolly (for fair Wanda was hid behind it).

"Unload him; unload him," muttered Maedhros irritably. "Let's try-" The rickety squeaking of the cart's rubber wheels interrupted him. He glanced down at the open suitcase, then up at Crackers.

"Yes, sir," she squeaked, then began to jog (quite a feat for the girl) toward the coming menace. The three and a half yards came rather close to winding our heroine; she skidded to a stop beside Wanda.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" The Walmart employee pressed on; Crackers cleared her throat, cursing her wisp of a voice. "Ma'am?" Cataract-clouded eyes stared straight ahead. _I hate to feel like I'm yelling_... "**_EXCUSE ME, MA'AM_**?"

The dolly stopped with a clunk and a scrape that must have scuffed the floor. Wanda scowled, turning slowly to face a blurry figure beside her. "Yes?" The word's inflection was scarcely to be heard.

"Hi, I was just, umm, looking for the uhh..." Words failed Crackers as she scanned her surroundings. _Shelves across the aisle behind the worker. Get her eyes off the Elves_."the bagging tents and camping sleeps, no, um, I mean the sleeping tents and camping bags, no, the-oh, never mind- that you... have on hand. Would you happen to know where they are?" She bared her teeth in hopes of smiling courteously. (Hopes failed.)

"Righ' behind me." The woman's voice sounded as if it were being dragged over gravel. "Got all kinds." She made to lift the dolly's front off the ground once more and continue her path of doom.

"Thank you, ma'am!" No sooner was the automatic reply out of Crackers' mouth than she realized her predicament. "Umm, uh, could you take me there, actually? If you don't mind."

For the record, Wanda's sigh was gravel-scarred, as well. "Sure." She turned around, emanating aggravation, and Crackers shot a parting glance of "_Hurry_!" back toward the Plushies before following her.

Though it was only perhaps four more yards-and a quick walk-to the wall running perpendicular to the luggage aisle, Crackers felt a strange burden to make conversation with the woman. She refrained, however, not knowing (as usual) what to say. Soon enough, they had reached the aisle's end and stood before a vast array of sleeping bags, with tents spreading out to the left.

"'Ere ya go," said Wanda, already poised to return to her cart of luggage.

Crackers could feel her mouth going dry but spoke up before she could be struck mute. "Ma'am, which kind do you...recommend?" She indicated the selection before her.

"Ain't been campin' since I was a kid. 'Skeeters got me in places you cain't imagine. Ain't gone back." The woman shook her head dolefully. "Ain't never gone back."

"Oh," said Crackers tamely, too distressed at the moment to gag. She laughed uncomfortably. "So, um, you probably weren't a good person to ask."

Wanda's scowl deepened. "Nope, I weren't." She once again made to turn around.

"Wait, ma'am-" began Crackers, but at that moment she too turned around, only to find the luggage aisle empty behind her. "Sorry! Never mind! Sorry! Thanks so much!" she chirped, immediately turning an intense gaze to the products on the shelf.

Wanda trudged off; Crackers froze in place and remained so until she heard the dolly begin to squeal its way across the tile once more. She took that as a sign to move on, and grabbing a sleeping bag at random-in case Wanda should turn around just then-darted off to the right.

Down the very next aisle she found what appeared to be four tall men with long hair; one had a tight grip over the head of a green plush dragon in a cardboard box that declared "Press here!"; another-the tallest-clutched a fire-engine red suitcase to his chest. The suitcase had been zipped. In fact, it hardly even appeared to be bulging.

Crackers turned up the corners of her lips. "So you got him sealed in, after all?"

"I can take the credit for that," said Eöl somewhat proudly.

"We'll just have to take great care that he doesn't awaken before we've removed him." Maedhros seemed to be saying this to placate himself.

"Of course," Eöl assured the Noldo. "We wouldn't want him choking to death due to the twist- _poor angle_ of his neck, or anything."

"My father-" Maeglin briefly quirked an eyebrow. "-the king of subtlety."

Maedhros sufficed to shoot the entire House of Eöl (an annoyed glare). Fingon prominently cleared his throat. "Does this mean our work here is finished?" he inquired.

Crackers shoved her sleeping bag onto a nearby shelf of weights and basketballs. "I suppose it does. Off to check out, then!" She glanced uncertainly at the elves before taking a step forward in the direction of the check-out lanes, back toward the store's entrance. The Plushies began to follow, but Crackers did not pick out one particular sound.

"Umm, Maedhros- I mean, Prince, er, Lord, you might want to roll the suitcase. Pull out the handle; it'll... attract less attention." She could only imagine the spectacle that a 7-feet-plus tall man with long, red hair clutching a suitcase to his chest for dear life itself, would be. The five (six, if you count friends who are packed in suitcases) were conspicuous enough as it was.

They paraded swiftly around the store's central clothing department, making their way between shelves of household goods and the newly-opened full grocery. The pilot case's small plastic wheels whirred softly behind Maedhros all the while.

"Okay," Crackers began, slowing her pace as the party approached the front of the store yet again, "we're aiming for one of the self-checkout lanes-" She paused for affirmation but was met only by four quizzical gazes. "-sorry, places where you..." She fumbled for a definition. "...make your own bill... No, pay a machine... for your items. It _is_ an odd term," she added ruminatively.

"All right," answered Maedhros slowly, "we'll pay for everything and then... slay the dragon?"

"I really don't think she's planning that far ahead," put in Maeglin helpfully.

"Yes. At my house. I think." I ought to say that the poor girl's brain was a thousand miles away, but it had really only fled a few yards, far enough across the horizontal sprawl of cash registers to locate four self-checkout lanes in the center. The group made a turn right, walked forward between checkout lines and bins of sale items, and soon found themselves at the back of a brief queue.

They waited. Soon, Eöl's foot was arrhythmically tapping the floor. Fingon was quietly humming to himself ("_Don't let him break out a harp_," prayed Crackers). Maeglin glanced warily about at the surrounding customers. Maedhros' impatient gaze was torn between the gradually shrinking line ahead of them and the suitcase at his feet, looking for all the world as if he feared Curufin was dying in there.

Finally, just one individual remained in front of the five, an elderly man with a basket of groceries crowned by a Whitman's toffee sampler. For lack of aught better to do, he rotated his head to look behind him.

_Shoot_, thought Crackers (who was always picking up on social cues of dubious existence),_ I need to make some witty remark since he spoke to me earlier... What do I say? What do I-_

"You're down a man from earlier, aren't you?" inquired the gentleman, winking.

"Yeah." Crackers laughed uncomfortably and nodded, scrambling to collect her thoughts into a coherent reply.

"That we are!" Super-Fingon, to the rescue. "Our friend couldn't take another second of plush toys in his face..." The Noldo emitted a brief chuckle, as did the mortal opposite him.

"_Thank you for shopping at-Walmart_," said a self-checkout kiosk. The elderly man proceeded to a newly-emptied register, leaving our quaint quintet first in line. Soon enough, their turn came; checking out did not prove terribly painful.

"_Welcome-to Walmart. Please scan your first item._" First the dragon-Crackers still tightly clutching its head. "_Unexpected item in the bagging area_."

"Eöl, could you move your hand?" Suitcase next. Tap "Skip bagging," then "Finish and Pay." "_Insert cash, or select payment type._"

The total came to $47.68. "Fingon, do you still have my wallet?" The bill was soon paid via $20 on one gift card, $10.14 on another, change from the elves' lunch, and a twenty-dollar-bill Crackers had slipped into her wallet, just in case.

"_Change will be dispensed below the scanner. Please take your receipt. Thank you for shopping at-Walmart_." Mission accomplished.

"I suppose that finishes it...?" probed Maedhros as he lifted the pilot case out of the bagging area with ease. Crackers nodded, grabbing the bagged dragon and pocketing wallet and change separately. She did not notice Fingon's look of dismay over losing his position as group treasurer.

With that, the five were soon past the security sensors and standing in the store's chilly breezeway. A glance outside revealed that the snow flurries had abated during their time in the store, leaving scarcely even a residue behind in the parking lot (thankfully).

"Dah, dah, dah; dah, dah, dah; dah, dah, dah; da, da, dahhh." The main theme of Peter Jackson's _The Fellowship of the Ring_ suddenly resounded from Crackers' coat-pocket. She hastily fished out her phone; "Incoming Call from Mom," read the white screen above a rather goofy picture of Mom herself.

Hitting "answer," Crackers raised the phone to her ear. "Hey, Momma-" she began...

"I've been sitting outside Chick-fil-A for fifteen minutes! Where are you- all?"

"Walmart," answered Crackers slowly. "It's a long story..."


	12. Junk in the Trunk

It really took very little time for Crackers' mother to arrive to the rescue in that '99 Honda Accord. It really took very little time for said Crackers and four plush elves to locate her in the crowded, asphalt expanse of the Walmart parking lot. What took longer, however, was deciding how to situate everyone in order to necessitate but one trip to the house from Walmart.

"Well," Crackers was slowly proposing, "there are only four seats with Mom driving, and seeing as making multiple trips to Chick-fil-A could have easily hastened disaster... it seems we'll all need to fit in one carload..."

"But there are five of us," Eöl obstinately countered. "We can't fit five people into four seats."

"There are _six_ of us," corrected Maedhros, tenderly patting the red suitcase (which had somehow become clutched to his chest-supported on the bottom by his maimed arm- once more). "My brother deserves to sit, just as much as the rest of us."

"But he isn't sentient at the moment," stated Fingon. He extended insistent hands to stow the case among the umbrellas and tote bags of the sedan's trunk. "Unless you'd like to inconvenience our hostess by waiting here with him..." He indicated Crackers' mother, whose eyes behind her metal-rimmed glasses examined the party impatiently from her stance beside the driver's door.

Maedhros appeared to weigh the options, then, with a sigh, reverently carried the suitcase to the back of the car and deposited it gingerly into the trunk. "Namárië," he whispered with a sad smile.

"Pardon my youthful ignorance," said Maeglin, apparently ignoring the two mortals in favour of his kin, "but that doesn't seem to have solved our problem-" He seemed to cut himself off as his eyes darted to the bag clutched in Crackers' hand; the plush dragon's tail jutted out from it like a warning buoy. "Oh. But that will."

He took a step toward Crackers. "May I?" She nodded, holding the bag open for him to remove the dragon upside-down.

"Maeglin," Fingon started-but in an instant's time his nephew had flipped the dragon upward, and Eöl, immediately plush, fell lightly to the concrete.

"Crackers, what is going on?" demanded the victim's mother.

"He'll be... fine," answered her daughter weakly, "as long as we can get him into the trunk without anyone seeing."

Crackers still held the bag, and Maeglin quickly restored the dragon to its inside before joining the three remaining animate elves to cluster around Eöll and quickly hoist him into the trunk. _BANG_! Fingon slammed the rear compartment shut.

"I believe that makes us ready?" he said, wiping his hands together swiftly in a "_We're done_" sort of gesture.

"Apparently," Crackers' mother (commonly known as Debbie) remarked skeptically, climbing with that into the driver's seat and motioning for Crackers to claim the front passenger's. The elves piled into the backseat, beige leather squeaking and grumbling beneath them as they buckled their seat-belts with practiced deliberation.

The car was silent for several minutes as the heat turned on and the party pulled out onto the road. Crackers turned a small vent toward herself and leaned forward in her seat, rubbing dry hands together in front of it as warm air began to seep out.

Upon making a left in the direction of home, Crackers spoke half-jokingly to her mother. "So we aren't going straight to church as planned?" She grinned and forced a chuckle from her throat.

"No." Mom's voice had that hard edge it only took on when she was really, truly angry-and had been that way long enough for the emotion to freeze over into something besides temporary wrath. "And you and your... _friends_ aren't going at all."

"Well, I guessed as much," Crackers murmured in reply.

Silence lingered between them for several minutes more. Hot air was exhaled from the small plastic vents surrounding the front seats. Maeglin, Fingon, and Maedhros whispered in one strand of elvish or the other from behind.

"I'm sorry, you know," Crackers ventured, keeping her voice low. "And I'm not just saying it like usual, when I don't think there's anything else I can say. I really am sorry."

"I know," was the answer, in a gentle, almost sad, tone. Debbie paused briefly-and then her lips quirked upward into something like a smile. "Only us..." she continued with a short laugh, calling up for both mother and daughter a thousand past jokes about their family's apparent unluckiness.

"SPF," quipped Crackers, meaning _Single Parent Family_, in the spirit of their common jest. "Five men shacking up with the SPF."

Her mother laughed aloud at that, that strange laugh that seemingly can't decide whether to be amused or scandalized. "What happened at Chick-fil-A?" she probed soon after. "And how the sam-patch did you end up at Walmart?"

It took the rest of the twelve-minute drive back home to explain the past four hours' affairs, and by the time the Honda pulled into the wide asphalt driveway of a little white house with aluminum siding, Crackers' mother at least understood-if not sympathized with-her daughter's predicament.

"Wait," the blonde woman said, turning off the motor and removing the key from the ignition once the sedan had been parked beneath the carport, "you haven't eaten, have you?"

"We have, lady," said Maedhros, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door nearest him with force enough to bang the side of the house. Crackers' mother shot him an annoyed look for both the collision and the reply.

"Exactly, Mom," Crackers said placatingly. "We're really not hungry."

Debbie sighed. "I meant you."

"Fine," answered Crackers flippantly, opening her own door and climbing out to stand beside Maedhros as Mom popped the trunk open with the push of a button, "I'll have something once we've got this... under control."

The five circled around to the back of the car, Crackers shivering and rubbing her hands together for the chilliness of the winter air; the grey Walmart bag dangled from her wrist. Maedhros definitively snatched up the red suitcase by its top handle.

Eöl lay among the plentiful umbrellas, an unappealing expression that seemed to say, "_If you are the one responsible for this Valar-awful sound, I will personally rip out your entire vocal complex. And that includes the tongue._" (Though that's only one possible interpretation.)

Fingon prominently cleared his throat, turning expectant eyes on his nephew. "Maeglin, you'll do the honours?"

"Apparently," Maeglin drily responded, roughly yanking his father up by one arm and proceeding to drag him along the driveway as Fingon again slammed the trunk shut and Debbie led the way to the back porch, keys ready to unlock the back door.

The porch was really little more than an extension of the concrete slab on which the seven-room house was founded. It was sheltered by a shingled roof (of sorts), which was in turn supported by several aluminum and wooden poles in the concrete base, and whose inner wooden workings were clearly visible from below.

The arrow of the dial thermometer that hung near the top of one of those wooden poles was somewhere between the "thirty" dash and the "40" number. Screen-door opened, lock then deadbolt clicked in their turns, and the five shuffled into the house.

"We're home," called Crackers' mother to her younger daughter (StarrySea, if you recall).

"Okay." The unenthusiastic reply resounded from the living room.

Entry through the back door landed the five newcomers at the place where the laundry room ahead morphed into the kitchen parallel on the right, the two separated by a wall mounted with cabinets, a sink, and an oven.

"Come on," said Crackers, motioning uncomfortably to the three elves, "let's confer in my room about- this."

She held up the plastic Walmart bag. She quickly led the way through the kitchen and the doorless-way that bled it out into the perpendicular living room. Through the living room, past her sister on the couch, left into the hallway, past the entrances to the bathroom and her mother's room, through StarrySea's then-pink bedroom... and finally they arrived in Crackers' bedroom, where the whole misadventure had been painfully birthed.

Maeglin dropped his father immediately onto the faux-tile floor. Crackers laid the Walmart bag on her bed, and Maedhros gently placed the suitcase beside it.

"Findekáno, would you mind un-flipping it?" he inquired.

"As a matter of fact, yes," muttered Fingon unhappily, but he did so anyway, two hands making easy work of it.

Maedhros pulled an arm out of the knot that was Curufin. That did it: the Plushie all but popped out of the suitcase, fabric limbs expanding, airborne, into the Noldo's full frame, which landed lightly on the polka-dot comforter. Crackers was unsure whether to externally blanch or internally groan at the thought that he would-if all went well-awaken on her bed.

"We have only to slay our dragon, do we not?" said Maedhros, turning displeased eyes on the Walmart bag as he removed the suitcase from beneath his brother.

"I believe so, cousin," answered Fingon, "and I will keep my promise of service..." He trailed off, eyes scanning the room for- "Crackers, where is that knife?"

"What kni-" she began instinctually but, remembering this was Fingon and that Fingon was (in most likelihood) quite trustworthy, walked the few paces to her desk and picked it up. "Best of luck," she chirped, handing it over to him and wincing.

Maedhros cautiously fished the dragon out of the bag at his brother's side and laid it, eyes toward the wall, on the comforter beside Curufin.

Fingon flicked the stainless steel blade out from the black handle. He raised it high above his head. "Go hence, foul spawn of Morgoth-" He plunged it down into the dragon's back. "-into the abyss prepared for thee!"

"_I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burnin' love; I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burnin' love..._"

"I think you've only made it angry," remarked Maeglin, shooting bored eyes down toward his father's still-plush form.

A burst of laughter was heard from the doorway, and Crackers turned to see her mother and sister watching the scene with before them with amusement. She shot them a "_Yeah-it's-funny-but-pretty-please-keep-it-down-because-this-is-really-an-inopportune-time-for-laughter_" look. (What can I say? She apparently had quite an expressive face.)

"The blade cut it all the way through..." Fingon examined the plush creature with a look of dismay. "But I suppose it didn't damage the... inner workings."

"I think," said Crackers slowly, approaching the bed with exaggerated caution, "we might want to flip it over and get at the 'workings' or whatever, then take those out. I bet that'll be considered killing it?"

"Yes, I'm aware of that," said Maedhros, sounding annoyed, "but none of us are about to risk turning that thing over and being turned to plush ourselves."

Crackers' gaze fell first upon the doorway behind her-_StarrySea's headband? Nope._-then across the room from left to right-_Aha, bandannas! _"Here," she said, striding a few steps over the zebra-print area rug that covered the cold tile to tug a camouflage bandanna from beneath a basket of hair elastics. "Hopefully, this should do the trick."

She crossed the room again and with an, "Everybody, turn around," flipped the dragon over and hastily blindfolded its heart-shaped eyes. "There," she breathed, laying it down triumphantly. "Ready for slaying."

"Russandol, would you like a turn?" tried Fingon, glancing apprehensively toward the dragon.

Maedhros held up his right arm and answered, tone now further aggravated, "I would if I could, Káno. I would if I could."

Maeglin shook his head before a word could escape his uncle's lips. "I have no interest in anything that's going to awaken _him_." He kicked the plush Eöl at his feet and leaned back against the chest-of-drawers, an item near enough to the bed for watching but far enough to keep himself out of the potential danger/impact/splash zone.

"All right, all right," said Crackers, turning her glance back to the plush creature (the small, green, reptilian one, that is), "I'll open it up for you, Maedhros." Eyeing a crack in the polyester, she slipped two fingers between the hooks and the loops of a Velcro strip.

The fabric parted, revealing-as could have been expected-a white, plastic box sealed by a screw. Attached to the box was a set of plastic hinges like vertebrae that ran up through the toy's neck, apparently so that its head would bob.

Crackers grinned nervously at Maedhros. "Shall we remove it or destroy it first?"


	13. Hammer (commonly Norse, Of Course)

Crackers' bed at that point bore a polka-dotted comforter. Poor, lumpy thing, in its five years it had been through the figurative wars. Among the bumps and ink-marks coating the colourful circles on its black surface, there was a rather momentous portion of ripped seam at the top, where the writer's pet rats (may they rest in peace) had once gotten their teeth on it. The long hole gaped open like the stomach of a certain plush dragon at the bed's opposite end.

"Well?" squeaked Crackers after a few moments of silence. She ran a finger over the white battery box that constituted the dragon's delicate innards.

"I vote for taking it out first," Maedhros answered ruminatively. "Then perhaps there won't be a need to destroy it."

An outside eye could scarcely have determined if it had run across an elaborate dissection or a homicide in progress. The devilish gleam in the eyes of Fingon (who held onto the haft of Crackers' pocket-knife for dear life itself)-not to mention the plush form of Curufin sprawled across the bed-suggested Murder Most Foul.

"I concur, Russandol," said Fingon, nodding firmly. He hefted his blade and leaned over both Crackers and the toy.

"I'll hold; you slice?" Who am I kidding? It was a murder and a dissection all at once, despite the decided lack of gore. (Thank the Valar for plush!)

"Certainly, Crackers." It took but two snicks of the knife for Fingon to sever the strings that bound the box to Puff the Tragic Dragon's soft interior. The Elf immediately stepped back. "Go on then, cousin."

Maedhros rolled his eyes. "Thank you for the bare minimum, my Urulóki specialist." The red-haired prince placed a hand around the box.

"Just letting you keep some dignity, dear," answered Fingon sweetly.

The "dear" in question took in a controlled sigh, and then with a swift yank removed the container, mechanic head-hinges and all. The dragon's plush neck flopped limply to one side; its severed belly sunk down. An anxious silence fell across the room as all eyes turned toward the still, prostrate figures of Curufin and Eöl. All waited.

And waited.

Had there been a random cricket in the room, at this point it would have begun to chirp.

They waited yet-but no change was to come over the two plush elves. In the uncomfortable absence of said cricket, Crackers' mother instead spoke up.

"It's getting on four o'clock, and at least I need to start getting ready for church."

And Crackers did the chirping. "Ok_ey_, Mom." She (mentally) reprimanded her voice for a sudden leap in pitch.

"StarrySea?" came Debbie's inquiry.

"Oh, I'ma stay and watch this." The dark-haired girl leaned up against Crackers' doorpost, smiling ambiguously. Her older sister wondered if she was paying more attention to the five-fine, three, if you don't count the inanimate ones- attractive elves or to the veritable show they and Crackers were putting on.

Undeterred, Maedhros had not removed his gaze from the battery box in his scarred hand. "I suppose our next step is to destroy either this or the _hrö_- I mean, plush body."

_Or we could always eat it and see how many languages we'd speak_... Crackers resisted a compelling urge to spout the Norse allusion.

"This I cannot _wait_ to see." Maeglin tapped long, pale fingers against the top of Crackers' chest-of-drawers. Had boredom a scent, he'd have reeked of it.

"Well, it seems to me that the white vessel is the essence of the creature," Fingon reluctantly volunteered, "so a more complete killing would result from its destruction..."

Maedhros nodded. "And besides, stabbing the fle-_plush_ didn't seem to have much effect when you tried it." He thoughtfully hefted the box. "But what shall be our instrument...?"

"Our? There is no we-" began Fingon. Poor thing-he still appeared to think there was a way out of involvement.

"I can go get a hammer..." Over the whir of Mom's hairdryer, StarrySea was making an offer from her stance in the doorway.

Crackers' eyebrows shot up, but before she could make protest-or even petition that things stay quiet- Maedhros had flashed StarrySea an irresistibly dazzling smile. "That will certainly serve. Thank you, lady."

With a somewhat silly smile of her own, StarrySea scurried off to the laundry room. Maedhros' glowing visage left Crackers with no option but to numbly nod along.

"Isn't this seeming to take more effort than it ought?" Fingon was apparently trying a new angle.

"Whoever said destroying a dragon-or any of Morgoth's... artistic endeavours-was supposed to be easy?" countered Maedhros obstinately. "Even you couldn't kill Glaurung-when he was scarcely more than a lizard!"

"Let me tell you I _would_ have-"

"Excuse me, but to my humble eye, you both appear to forget the fact that-" Here the almost-quarreling pair whirled upon Maeglin. Their kinsman took the opportunity for a dramatic pause before continuing. "-it's only a plush toy."

"Well, so are you," Maedhros pointed out.

Crackers found herself in accord with Maeglin. _That sure doesn't mean it can't be straight from Morgoth_, she thought better of saying.

Maeglin simply rolled his eyes. "The obvious difference is that I'm animate."

"Well, you certainly don't have to be." Maedhros made a frightening move toward the dragon and the bandanna covering its eyes.

"I have it!" At few moments in Crackers' life had she been gladder to see her sister.

"Excellent!" said Maedhros, snapping out of 'simmering' mode to become both enthusiastic and amiable once again. He stretched out a hand, apparently to catch the tool. "Hammer!"

StarrySea swung it backward as if to prepare for a gentle, underhand toss.

"Nope, nope!" exclaimed Crackers, jumping rather idiotically into what was almost the path of an airborne metal object even as Mom turned the hairdryer off. "No one here is Thor; no one needs a flying hammer..." She beckoned to her sister, twisting her lips slightly upward. "You can come in, you know."

The hammer was safely delivered into Maedhros' hand. He set it on the bed, near Curufin's feet, exchanging it for the battery box once more, which he stooped to place on the ground. Lifting the tool once more, he descended to one knee beside the dragon's vitals.

"Don't tell me you're just going to beat it to smithereens..." groaned Maeglin, stepping well out of his kinsman's way.

"I don't see any other option," answered Maedhros, poising the tool to strike.

"Perhaps we should check the envel-" Fingon's suggestion had Crackers' hand scrambling toward her pocket. Yet too late.

With a blow sounding hard enough to splinter the Peel-n-Stick flooring, Fëanor's eldest lowered the hammer. _CRACK_. (Is whack, but not the point.) The plastic box split into at least a dozen pieces, which promptly skittered and scattered across the floor.

"_I'm just a hun- a hun- a hu-_..." Life left the dragon ere it could utter its profound last words; the music petered out into a dull buzzing sound, then silence.

"The Lord of Nan Elmoth shall not lay at the feet of Engwar and Golodhrim to be bitten by rats!" Eöl sprang to his feet cursing Crackers' chinchillas. Elrohir had apparently sunk his teeth into a juicy Sindarin toe. Again.

"One dreams strange nightmares in that form," Curufin remarked, blasé. "What in the Circles of Eä is a hunk of burning love?!"

Maedhros ignored him, instead tossing his arms around his brother in all but an immense bear-hug. "I hope I'll never have to see you like that again."

Curufin squirmed out of his brother's clasp. "And I.. hope you won't... either," he said uncomfortably.

Crackers' mother chose that moment to stick her head in the door. "StarrySea, are you dressed for church? I'm done in the bathroom if you'll need it." And then she saw the pieces of plastic. And the hammer. "Do I want to know?"

"Mission accomplished?" tried Crackers, continuing meekly, "I'll go get the broom..."

Debbie sighed. "No, don't worry about it. You should go eat. Right now."

Crackers nodded. She had begun to notice some hunger pangs over the past hour, which was unusual for her, but they hadn't bothered her much. However, it was long past lunchtime (which she'd skipped). She glanced over the crowd of elves as StarrySea ducked out of the room. "Anyone care for a bite to eat?"

She was met with resounding affirmatives-particularly from Curufin and the limping Eöl-and led the way to the kitchen.

~oOo~

Twenty minutes later, Crackers found herself perched at the high table on the farthest right wall of her family's living room/family room/den/parlor/dining room. (Nothing like multipurpose, right?) On a paper plate before her lay a wheat tortilla smeared with hummus, a granola bar, some dried fruit, and a stick of string cheese. She briefly grimaced down at the seeming heap of food but at once let herself be distracted by her odd (to say the very least) surroundings.

"You mortals eat well," commented Curufin, sticking his fork into yet another bite of Crackers' pasta TV dinner.

Now _what am I going to eat for lunch on Friday_? was her internal lament. "Thank you?" was her external reply. _Sitting over there, eating my squash and zucchini_... A mental tirade, she presumed, was better than glaring at him across the table.

The other elves, however, had not committed such a trespass of Crackers' personal stock. Eöl had popped a can of tuna and was eating it with a spoon. (The authoress had offered him mayonnaise-really, she had!- but he only refused it as "poison." _Meh, his loss_.)

Maeglin, Fingon, and Maedhros had polished off a batch of StarrySea's blue chocolate-chip cookies. Crackers could only thank whatever few lucky stars she had that her sister wasn't present to notice such an atrocity.

Mom chose that moment to enter, casting a silent gaze over Crackers' plate before addressing her daughter: "Well, it's four o'clock, so we'll be getting going here shortly. You know the signal isn't very good inside the church, but try and call anyway, if you need us. We should be home between eight and eight thirty, like usual."

"Okay," answered Crackers weakly, allowing for some pause before inquiring, "What are you gonna tell Scott or Will or whoever's on about why I'm not there?"

(Crackers volunteered weekly in the church's coffee shop after the worship service, while her mother and sister worked together in the youth building's cafe.)

"Probably just that you had a commitment with some friends and let it go at that. Hopefully they won't be shorthanded..."

"They'll want me around for dishwashing, though." Crackers smiled; after actually making the drinks, her favourite task was to wash the various utensils that quietly kept the cafe running.

Debbie turned her head toward the hallway and called to StarrySea. "Are you coming?"

"Yep, right now," was the reply, and the very girl emerged into the living room, clad in her self-proclaimed 'winter uniform' of skinny jeans and a dark hoodie. She slipped her leather jacket on over it all even as her mother donned her own coat.

"Have fun," said Crackers, taking a bite of hummus wrap and waving.

"You too," responded StarrySea teasingly. She shot an uncertain glance toward the elves seated at the table and on the blanket-covered couch nearby.

"Bye, love you, remember to call." Mom passed Crackers to head out the kitchen's backdoor, StarrySea in tow.

"Love you, too. See you." It took everything Crackers had (and some she didn't) not to fall on her knees and beg her fairest, kindest, most gracious, beautiful mother to either take her with her or just stay home. The Elves, though, put on just enough pressure that she kept her dignity.

The living room was quiet as the click and thuds of Crackers' family's exit faded and the Accord could be heard firing up beneath the carport. The twenty-minute drive to church, Crackers was certain, would hold no lack of conversation for them. She sighed and took the last bite of her tortilla. _Now on to the cheese stick_...

"Well," said Fingon suddenly, somehow managing to look elegant while brushing blue crumbs from his lips, "what are we to do now?"


	14. Sorry About That

"'Move from Start and switch places with an opponent whom you bump back to Start.'" Curufin cleared his throat. "'Sorry.'" The Elf glanced up to Crackers. "And I assume there's no number because I'm taking someone else's place?"

From her cross-legged position on the couch, the authoress nodded tamely. She had suggested _Sorry! _among other board games for its simplicity, neglecting to realize that it was a "heated discussion" waiting to happen. And now came the "Sorry!" card, first of the game.

"Well," mused the Noldo, "if my object is to get the pawn around the board and back home, the most ideal space to take is..." He traced a thin forefinger above the game board, smacked it down by a green pawn. He quickly replaced the piece with a red one of his own, sending the green mover spinning across the thick cardboard.

"Cheating! Despicable treachery!" Eöl snatched up the displaced pawn and slammed it down on the board in a fist.

Curufin quirked an eyebrow. "Crackers?"

"Um, no, uh, not cheating, actually." She managed a spurious laugh. "That's why they call it 'Sorry'!"

"That doesn't mean I am..."

"Curvo, please," said Maedhros, rolling his eyes and lifting one of his own yellow pawns. "Must you rub salt in it?"

"I like salt, actually," put in Maeglin from the recliner. Fingers laced behind his head, ebony hair hanging loose about his face, left leg resting on his right, he was the picture of ease (insofar as ease delights to provoke its (e)strange(d) father).

Eöl released a huff of breath; glaring poisoned javelins at Curufin, he set his pawn down in his "Start" space with exaggerated care. It joined one other. Maedhros risked a glance around the group, and Fingon nodded consent to his cousin's turn.

"'Move forward eleven spaces or backward one,'" read Fëanor's eldest. "I'll go forward. One, two, three..." He counted off the jumps beneath his breath.

Eöl drummed his fingers on the board. "Is that necessary?" he muttered.

"Keep quiet, Father," said Maeglin, "or he'll lose count and have to start all over."

However, the enumeration soon came to its end; Maedhros, though, had not set down his pawn. He instead sat with pursed lips, his hand hovering above a green token. "Backward," he said. "I'll just move backward."

"Nonsense," said Curufin. "You can hardly help where your eleven put you. Go on, take your place."

Meanwhile, Eöl's expression had contorted swiftly from one of rage to one of injured pride, but now the slits of his eyes spoke of wrath once more.

"Well," offered Crackers, "I don't think changing your mind is against the rules..."

"Thank you," replied Maedhros, and counted eleven spaces back toward his first spot, whence he moved back once more. He placed his hand on the stump of his right wrist and turned amiably to Fingon. "Your turn, I believe."

Eöl snorted. "Thank you," he grumbled, "though I don't need your condescension."

Gratefully, he was ignored, and play continued reasonably calmly for the next round or so. Eöl's single green pawn made its slow way around the board; he soon found himself three spaces away from his "Safety Zone," which would welcome him "Home" to begin winning the game.

"'Move forward twelve spaces.'" The Dark Elf advanced eight, touching down all the way at home. "There."

"Is that allowed?" probed Curufin, turning to Crackers once more.

"Not exactly... You just sort of have to go back to where you started and wait-"

Eöl slammed the card down in disgust. "Next time," he growled.

Curufin snickered, drawing his own card. "'Move forward seven or split between two pawns,'" he announced, and counted of one-two-three spaces with one red pawn and four-five-six-seven with another until he reached the position occupied by a token of a certain (green, of course) colour. He flashed a grin both sinister and shameless. "Sorr-" he began, but was stopped by a single, loud hand-clap.

Fingon was smiling winsomely. "I have a delightful idea," he said, taking down his hands and folding them in his lap. "Why don't we play something different?"

"Why do 'we' have to _play_ at all?" snorted Maeglin.

Fingon sighed, turning 180 degrees to face his nephew with an unbecoming Shut-your-piehole-kid expression. "If you have a better plan to occupy us, do share it."

Maeglin glanced down at his lap. His gaze darted left. His gaze darted right. He rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers slowly on the cushy arm of the recliner, his five companions looking on expectantly.

"Well?" inquired Fingon.

"I'll have you know I am occupied perfectly well just sitting here." He gave a dignified sniff and replaced his hands behind his head.

"That's because of his tiny intellect," muttered Eöl rather caustically.

"Then he got that from _your_ genes." Fingon nonchalantly began clearing the game-board of pawn and cards.

"Your compliments overwhelm me." Maeglin only shut his eyes, curling his lips upward into the phantom of a smirk.

"Behold the refined etiquette of the noble Golodhrim..." Eöl shot his (unfortunate) brother-in-law a haughty glance.

Fingon sighed, released a handful of translucent plastic pieces into the flat box labeled "Sorry!". He was wise enough not to glorify father and son with a response. Maedhros had begun the rather painstaking process of folding the board with a single hand.

"Don't forget this!" Crackers bent over from the couch to snag the smaller box that constituted a rules-insert for the game. She positioned it over the pawns and cards, then motioned to Maedhros. "Just put it on top."

Maedhros did as directed and lidded the box, shooting the narrow tower of games between a bookcase and a living-room wall a wary look. Putting games away in that house was like pulling a hair out of your throat: difficult, strategic, and potentially painful*. (*For an avalanche of board games, card games, dice games, box games, word games-yes, our Charming Little Family was fond of games-is never quite pleasant to find oneself beneath.)

"Um, I'll take care of it later." The authoress smiled proudly; she'd just thought better of putting on a show for the Elves called _Death by Game_. She figured she naturally embarrassed herself enough without performing, too.

"Excellent," said Fingon. "Then we return once more to our former difficulty: what are we do with ourselves?"

"We could play that MonoPOLEly." Curufin gestured toward the stack. "You have three of it-though I don't quite see why-and whatever CatoPOLEly is, too."

As tempting as three solid hours without boredom sounded, it would still be three solid hours-and three solid hours of the game that had singlehandedly cause more fights in the house than such typical issues as curfew, chores, and who-has-the-remote combined.

"No," answered Crackers, "let's not..." Monopoly was always fun in theory (hence her family's accumulation of four separate editions of the game), but it never quite ended well. (Or ended at all, if the fight was particularly bad...)

A thoughtful silence dominated the room but a few seconds before Maedhros spoke up with a sudden revelation. "Your envelope, Crackers-won't it at least have a suggestion for us?"

Duh. The authoress resisted a compelling urge to facepalm. "Oh sure, yeah! It should," she said. "Let's see... What have I got in my pocket?" She was still wearing the Chick-fil-A fleece, and sure enough, she found the precious Envelope where she'd bestowed it.

Unfolding the paper with fidgeting fingers, she lifted the flap to remove what appeared to be a sewing template, in the shape of... a pointed ear? "**_DISCARDED_**" was stamped across one side in bold, red print. She flipped the thin sheet over to read: "..._and there among many tales they heard told in full the lay of Beren and Luthien and the winning of the Great Jewel..." -The Fellowship of the Ring_.

Crackers' brow furrowed even as a knot took shape in the pit of her stomach. There could only be one possible interpretation of this... It wasn't quite a pretty one. "Nope," she said quietly, and hastened to tuck the note back into the envelope, thinking something along the lines of "_Useless piece of junk._"

"What does it say?" demanded Maedhros.

"Something incredibly stupid." Crackers grumbled her reply without looking up.

"Which is?" prodded Fingon.

"Classified."

Holding her ground was not in Crackers' nature; if she could've had a piece of shrimp for every time her mother had told her to "_Get a backbone_," like a flamingo she'd have been bright pink. But on this matter, she was quite adamant: There was no way in the Circles of Eä she was breaking out _The Lays of Beleriand_. If _**Sorry**_ had left them on the brink of bloodshed, the tale of Tinúviel could only lead to nuclear war.

Never mind that the twisted individuals behind F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. knew more about this than Crackers did; never mind that they gave her certain instructions via the envelope for specific reasons. Obviously, there had been a mistake. Obviously, the authoress needed to use her own judgment. And wasn't everything up to her in the end, anyway?

She slipped the paper back into the envelope-only just in time. Curufin tossed a hand upward and all but tore the faulty thing out of her hand. Reaching deft fingers inside, he pulled the envelope's two paper sides away from each other. He briefly stared inside, then turned it upside-down.

"It's empty," he remarked, cutting inquisitive eyes toward Crackers.

"Yes," she answered simply. "I'm sure it takes a while to generate a new note, and besides, it's having some... technical difficulties at the moment."

Maedhros quirked a disbelieving eyebrow, then gave a resigned sigh. "You know best, then." He pursed his lips.

"Perhaps we can try again in a few minutes," suggested Fingon. "I'm certain it will have worked everything out by then. But in the meantime...?"

"Hey, lil' Gis, it's okay, girl," Crackers addressed a newcomer to the living room: a small tabby cat who had frozen in her tracks on seeing the chamber's six occupants.

The skittish thing, Gisele, was one of three family cats. Her abusive past had made her somewhat shy of everything on two legs, so she had spent much of the time since her adoption under Mom's bed (earning her the nickname "The Troll"). One of her eyes was permanently crossed (earning her the nickname "The One-Eyed Wonder"). The flabby skin of her stomach dragged the floor when she walked (earning her the nickname "The Floor-Cleaner"). At this moment, however, the Cat of a Thousand Names stared uncertainly at the assembled group.

"C'mon, Gisita," coaxed Crackers from the couch, knowing it would do little good. "It's okay, baby." After a few seconds more, Gisele finally made a run for it, darting behind the couch and taking a swift right into the kitchen. She was aiming for the litter box or the food bowl in the laundry room behind.

"What is the matter with that creature?" asked Fingon slowly.

"Poor little Gis, she's got issues..." answered Crackers, mind already traveling down the path of a potential time-killer. It was all thanks to Gisele's _Wii Fit Plus_ Mii and the associated cat-weighing. She glanced at the white video game console sitting beside the bulky TV.

"Hey," she said hesitantly, "have y'all ever used a Wii?"

"A wee what?" replied Maedhros, and that settled it.

**Credit to Pergjithshme for the Plushies' and my attempt at playing a game. :) **

**And while I'm doing the A/N thing, I just want to thank all of you, whether you review, have favorite/followed, or simply read and enjoy this story. You guys make my day on a regular basis! :D  
>-Crackers<strong>


	15. Wii Aim for the Cat

_snafu_ \sna-ˈfü, ˈsna-ˌfü\ _noun_  
><em>: a situation marked by errors or confusion : muddle; also : an error causing such a situation<em>  
>Origin: <em><strong>s<strong>ituation **n**ormal **a**ll_ **_f_**_ouled **u**p_

* * *

><p>"I beg your pardon," began Maedhros, waving the Wii remote clumsily in front of the screen, "but why <em>in the Circles of Eä<em> does it give me the option to play as Mandos?"

Crackers turned all the hue of the Noldo's hair. Why, oh _why_ hadn't she thought of the Valar-Miis? It must have been several summers ago that she'd gotten bored enough to transpose the Powers of Arda into rotund Wii-avatars... _Come to think of it, that could have been what got her on their Naughty List for Plushie reception..._

But no mind, she was now fumbling for words of explanation. "Um well, I think I was just... bored. You know, nothing better to do than-"

"Blaspheme?" said Fingon pointedly.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far..." Crackers loosed an uncomfortable chuckle.

"What else," Fingon gently elaborated, "would you call this?" He indicated the black-hatted, featureless, pale face labeled 'Mandos' on the TV screen. "How could you make such a presumption about Lord Námo?"

Potential responses tumbled through the authoress' mind like so many sparring cats. "_Because I thought he was, oh, I don't know... fictional?" "At any rate I've learned my lesson now." "I was just trying to capture his essence! It isn't meant to be literal." "Shut up, Plush face-like you would know-"_ Wait, never mind...

Crackers opted instead for a demure smile, chirping "Sorry!", which was all but her life's mantra. "Just, um, skip him over, if you don't like him." The shooing gesture she made toward the television really didn't fit.

"Oh, I'll be Mandos," grumbled Eöl from the other side of the green couch. "And the new Prophecy of the North won't be pretty at all."

Crackers scooted even closer to her armrest.

Curufin shook his head and wryly clucked his tongue. "Bitter, bitter," he remarked, smirking.

"Like the cup of Noldorin oppression!"

"Ladies, please," Maeglin purred from the recliner, eliciting a pair of venomous glares. "We're trying to play now." He bared all of his teeth in a smile far from pleasant.

Crackers nodded along, eyebrows creeping up her forehead. _Whatever it takes_, she thought. _As long as he doesn't make it worse.._. The brief, ensuing silence, however, was somewhat of an improvement, before Maedhros, jerking the Wii-mote wildly as he scanned through the pages of Miis, exclaimed aloud: "Mama!"

"-Mia, here we go again!"

"Is your mama a llama?"

"Different English classes," explained Fingon, on behalf of the Dark Elf and his son.

"I see," said Crackers dumbly, at rather a loss, turning her attention to the red-haired, grey-eyed, brown-clad profile that smiled out of the television. _Nerdanel_ read the name beneath her; she looked like some kind of anime reject.

"Was not even my mother spared?" Maedhros sounded Shocked and Abhorred. "Where are my brothers and I, then? I imagine I'll be seeing us all soon enough, at this rate." He flailed the arm holding the Wii-mote, sending the translucent blue finger that marked its locale ricocheting around the Mii-selection screen.

For once, Crackers had good news. "Actually, there isn't one for any of you." Five pleasantly surprised elvish faces turned her way. "There isn't the right hair when you're trying to make one," she elaborated, hoping her words didn't also say, "_Trust me, I tried_."

"Hm," said Maedhros, nodding Crackers his approval. He scrolled through another page of round Mii faces. "I think I'll be Tulkas," he announced, selecting a gold-bearded avatar. "At least you've got him close to right."

Fingon, as Player Two, was the next to decide; after some initial horror at discovering Morgoth's Mii, he opted for Húrin's, a nostalgic smile crinkling his face. Maedhros shoved his Wii-mote at Curufin so that the other could be Player the Third. Curufin scowled at the face of "Beren" before, not without an annoyed sigh, opting for Boromir.

"Doesn't look a thing like him," he complained.

"Wrong Boromir. This one's from the Third Age," answered Crackers with a hint of sass. Catching her tone, she elaborated, smiling, "You might have known his namesake, though?"

Curufin only rolled his eyes.

"Come, nephew," Fingon was saying, holding the Wii-mote out to Maeglin like the hilt of a sword. "Why don't you play?"

"I don't play."

Fingon huffed his aggravation. "What _do_ you do, then?" he queried impatiently.

"Watch and laugh."

The response made it Fingon's turn for eye-rolling. "You're hopeless." He turned and tentatively proffered the remote to his brother-in-law. "Eöl?"

"I just said I would pick Mandos, didn't I?" he answered; taking the Wii-mote, he hastily did just that.

Maedhros recovered his own remote from Curufin, and with a few button-presses at Crackers' bidding, he had landed in Wii Sports' virtual-bowling paradise. "How do I...?" He held the Wii-mote as if it would at any moment sprout fangs and gnaw his hand off. (Which is an understandably disturbing notion when you've only one hand to begin with.)

"Hit the 'A' button," Crackers instructed. "Then swing it back like this." Made from her seated position, the underhand motion whacked Eöl in the nose with a _clop_. Crackers' spidery hand sprang to her lips. "Yikes! So sorry, so sorry..." Her descent into incoherence was, ironically, quite defined.

The Dark Elf's adamant glare and brooding silence were almost more menacing than any number of curses and threats he could have spit at her.

"_Anyway_," she continued, shooting a nervous glance back at Eöl before turning to Maedhros once again, "just squeeze the back of the remote when you swing and hold your hand steady." He did so. "All right, you've got it; now, swing forward and let go."

The turquoise bowling ball flew out of digital Tulkas' fingerless hand, barreled down the lane, and toppled eight pins. A racket of cheers and applause resounded from the TV speakers. "Is that good?" inquired Maedhros.

"Yeah, that's great!" Crackers gave him a toothy but well-meant smile. "And now you get to try again."

"Ni-ice spare," boomed the invisible Wii announcer.

Maedhros looked at the black scoring table beside digi-Tulkas' head. "The slash means I got them all?"

"In two tries," Crackers amended. "Next round, it'll double your score. Or something." Despite countless family games on $1-night at nearby lanes, she remained a lost ball in the high weeds (or the gutter, in the event of bowling) when it came to scoring the game.

Fingon was next, and it took him exactly two and a half attempts for on-screen Húrin to set his magenta bowling ball loose. Despite a whizzing start, it careered off the lane and into the gutter. The second roll (gratefully) proved better, after which Curufin took possession of Maedhros' remote.

He grabbed it by the wrist-strap, held it out in front of him between two fingers. "What purpose does this band serve?"

Crackers tittered somewhat sheepishly. "Oh! Thanks! You're supposed to put it around your wrist. Keeps the remote from flying out of your hand and into the screen."

Curufin snorted. "Seems cumbersome."

"Well, it just flops against your wrist if you don't put it on..." she answered. "I mean, most of the time I don't use it, but it's a good idea to."

"All right, then," was Curufin's nonchalant reply. With that, he gripped the remote in hand, pronouncedly straightened the wristband as it dangled loose, and (as fate would have it) bowled a strike. With a somewhat arrogant smile, he returned the Wii-mote to Maedhros and went to stand behind the recliner, crossing his arms to rest them on top of it.

Fingon handed the Player 2 remote to Eöl, who took it, rose from the couch, stretched his arms, and made to swing backward.

It was at that very moment, that Giselle, if you recall the cross-eyed feline of a thousand names, chose to come darting out of the kitchen, brown belly wagging rapidly to match her pace. Poor thing, she was so dumb that she didn't know how to retract her claws, but their typical _click-click-click_ was not to be heard against the carpet.

Giselle would have turned to run behind the couch, but there sat Inke, the family's immense, ebony, malodourous tomcat. He was blocking her way, and in a flash of terrorized thought, she decided to risk the open floor.

A pair of black boots stood before her like twin mountains; through the kaleidoscope of a crossed eye, they became an infinite, impassable ridge. She froze for half a second, bewildered and unsure. "_Hey, Gizzy,_" came the voice of her owner; she almost turned back. But then the mountains parted.

The little cat took her chance; hunkering low, she dashed between Eöl's feet. He stumbled over her with a string of curses that showcased simultabeously the dregs of English and Sindarin alike. The Wii remote was suddenly hurtling through the air; for all the world, the white blur could have been a baseball, winging its doomed flight toward a neighbour's window.

Like a baseball it remained. A hit! Home run! Grand slam! Crackers knew it from the sound of a great crash, of thick glass-shards thunking on the dirty grey carpet, of the now-broken TV humming and fizzling like a drunken robot.

"It's gonna blow!" she shrieked in panic and dismay, covering her ears and ducking low beside the couch. It was several silent seconds before she realized that she was, in fact, quite safe. She cleared her throat, stood to her feet, and stuck her disproportionately large nose in the air with a dignified sniff.

Surveying the dispersal of glass fragments that decorated the floor in front of the TV, Crackers lifted her gaze to the splintered screen itself. A prismatic array of vertical stripes had appeared beneath the cracked glass, the appliance's epitaph.

Slowly, pointedly, Crackers' head pivoted in Eöl's direction. She cleared her throat emphatically. "Thank you," she said with shaky sarcasm.

He heaved his broad shoulders upward. "I was aiming for the cat, you know!"

Speechless (and not, for once, out of natural introversion), Crackers raised her eyebrows and returned her gaze to the television's fresh corpse.

"Well, that's a _splendid_ defense, isn't it?" remarked Curufin caustically. He hadn't moved from his position behind the recliner.

"Silence, you Golodh swine!" roared Eöl, whirling about to face the Fëanorian. "I've done nothing but listen to your insults since first we arrived in this nasty hole, and I am _finished_ with you and your tongue!"

"_Don't call my palace a nasty hole!_" recited Thorin from the dark recesses of Crackers' mind. Her lips might have mouthed the words, but, still in a stupor of dismay, it was without her knowledge.

Curufin's reply was not terribly bright. On an impulse, still leaning, blasé, over the recliner, he parted his lips and stuck out his tongue for several long seconds. Retracting it, he added, "I'm actually rather fond of my tongue."

Eöl's face went positively livid; he wadded his mighty smith's hand into a fist and swung it upward, lunging at Curufin, who merely ducked, smirking. The Dark Elf would not be deterred; he took a swift step toward the Noldo and planted a fierce kick in his ribcage.

Maedhros emitted what was more than likely the foulest string of Quenya possible, and all but flew over the recliner to his brother's defense. Not a moment did he hesitate to punch Eöll square across the jaw. The popping, knocking sound of contact with the bone resonated around the room; Eöl turned on Maedhros as Curufin scrambled lightly to his feet.

A flurry of yells in two strains of elvish went up from the zone between couch and recliner; it became the thick of a turbulent fray as Fingon rushed to Maedhros' side. Maeglin calmly rose from his large chair's chocolate-brown cushions; avoiding the crystal shrapnel on the floor, he went to stand beside Crackers. The authoress was in the painstaking process of turning around, teeth all but buried in her bottom lip as she bit down, hard.

"You still have the-" began Maeglin, but Crackers was already fumbling in her pocket.

"Yeah. The Envelope," she said, with a sharp intake of breath. Her fingers all but trembled for her velocity as she unfolded the very item and lifted its creased flap.  
>She peered inside. <em>Empty<em>.

But now she didn't need F.A.U.L.T.T.Y.'s help to find a relevant and unhelpful quote; Turin's poignant words flashed effortlessly across her mind:

"_Wilt thou slay me swiftly_?"

**And a thank you to _5SecstoThrowItFB_, my guest reviewer! :)**


	16. Of Broken Glass

"Is there a broom in this house?" The words rolled nonchalantly off Maeglin's tongue. The treacherous Elf leaned just the slightest bit toward Crackers, sharp glance flitting down to examine the empty Envelope in her hand.

Our reluctant heroine, however, remained in somewhat of a daze. She had by now turned the Envelope completely upside down and was holding it wide open, shaking it to and fro as though the air passing inside would resuscitate it.

"Come on, come _on_," she begged it beneath her breath. "Please, baby, don't leave me alone..."

Maeglin rolled his eyes and emitted a sigh so deep it heaved his shoulders. (It was, however, inaudible over the continued clamour of the Brawl to End All Brawls between the couch and the recliner.) "I said," he repeated, "'Is there a broom in this house?'"

"Come on, honey, one more time for Mama; it's okay, don't be shy. Just-" She stopped dead (figuratively, I should hope) in the midst of her pleas. "Broom?" Arms and Envelope frozen in the air, she turned quizzically toward Maeglin.

The Elf shrugged, misplacing his loose black hair in a way that might have turned Crackers' legs to jelly, had she been bothered to notice. "It only seems that you should clean this up." He indicated the dismembered remains of the TV screen, glimmering on the faded carpet.

_"Why don't you clean it up yourself if you're so concerned?!" _Thankfully, Crackers stifled her Sassy initial response (Such was one of the few good habits a lifetime of introversion had instilled in her). She replied instead, lips contorting silently between the words, "I, um... Don't you think we have other-" Here she jerked her head toward the fighting, flailing, flurry of the Furious Four. "-issues?"

"Yes, of course, but there isn't much to be done about that, so I thought you might as well make yourself useful." Maeglin gave her an almost-pleasant smile.

"Awfully nice of you," she answered, tone quiet but sarcastic. An even louder _thunk _than previously called her attention to the sparring Elves once again.

Maeglin smirked. "I do all that I can." He paused briefly. "In all likelihood, this could go on for hours-"

Crackers mouthed, _"Hours?"_ in silent shock, eyes widening as if hypnotized.

"Oh yes, easily," Maeglin elaborated. "If my father's time among the Dwarves taught him anything, it was how to hold his own in a fight. Especially when outnumbered."

"I always thought he got on pretty decently with the Dwarves..." Crackers answered.

"When he wasn't accusing one of them of cheating him, or stealing his techniques, or maliciously smashing his finger with a hammer-that was actually a rather funny one-or being a general plague to the face of Arda." Maeglin's lips curled wryly. "Terribly charming, my father."

"As I've seen," said Crackers, quirking an eyebrow. "But how long, though, _should_ it take for them to knock him senseless?" Making dismal note to herself, she added, "In the middle of my living room..." She pressed a hand to her temple as if in pain. Scratch that, she _was _in pain.

Once again, Maeglin shrugged. "How should I know? That's why I suggested you sweep up this broken glass."

"Yes," she replied, sighing. "I'll go get the broom..." _Because I'd hate for you to cut your precious feet_, she thought bitterly. The authoress almost began the trudge to the kitchen, and the laundry room behind it, but stopped short and turned to Maeglin. "Or I would if... that..." She flung her hand toward the other four Plushies. "...wasn't in my way."

"Oh," said Maeglin, briefly pursing his lips. "It was at very least worth the discussion, though."

Crackers knew better than to disagree, so she instead remained silent, watching as Curufin punched the nose of Eöl, who turned on him but was met with the wrath of Maedhros, whose arm the Dark Elf proceeded to bite, elicting the royal vengeance of Fingon. All the while the four muttered and cursed and (occasionally) shouted in a swirling blend of Sindarin and Quenya. Luckily for Crackers, she couldn't catch a word of it. (Or else she might have had to scrub her ears out with soap.)

I don't really know how long the two-F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. victim participant and half-Noldorin traitor-stood there by the shattered TV with its rigor-mortis rainbow of stripes on display. After a while, spectating grew quite boring, and the racket of the fray had given Maeglin a headache, and Crackers' legs were tired of standing, and the two looked at one another. Maeglin raised both eyebrows; Crackers nodded. Something simply had to be done.

Something, however, is rather an elusive fellow. He very seldom likes to be accomplished-even less, to be thought of- and on those rare occasions when he presents himself, he is often less than timely about it. Today was just one of those such cases (for he was in fact on a hot vacation to Tahiti); Maeglin and Crackers, therefore, were left to their own devices and a conclusion reading:_ had to be done.

"Well?" Crackers' tone was low and controlled. "How should we break them up?"

"'Break up'?" A horrible grimace crossed Maeglin's face. "I wasn't aware any of them were a coup- Oh! Yes, well, never mind." He gave a dignified sniff. "'Break up' in its simplest sense, naturally. And I don't know."

"Neither do I..." Crackers winced to notice a drop of blood on the couch's green suede. _Mom will kill... _was her detached musing.

"Then I have no better plan than simply to charge in and pray for the best?"

Crackers, turning back to Maeglin, hoped to goodness that her expression didn't scream _"Are you an idiot?" _as loudly as did her thoughts. "Or we could just keep watching...?" She gave the Elf a sheepish grin

Maeglin pursed his lips, tilted his head pensively to one side. "It does suffice to entertain," he admitted, and that (Thank the Valar) ended their valiant efforts.

The two, however, did not have much longer to stand bored, for not fifty-three seconds later, both extensions of the house-phone began to ring, startling Crackers an inch off the floor for their jarring suddenness.

"Telephone?" queried Maeglin rather slowly, as if his tongue had to pursue and capture the word while he said it.

"Yep!" said Crackers, elated for an excuse to abandon her guests. "Better get that." She all but hurled the Envelope-It had remained in her hand-onto the floor and made a mad dash into the hallway, then into her mother's bedroom, to retrieve the rambunctious appliance.

The clunky phone's screen was lit up sulfurous green, and Crackers was quick to read on it her mother's cell phone number. She hit 'TALK' and lifted the device to her ear. "Hee-y!" she said, meaning _hey _and cursing her voice's sudden rise in pitch.

"Hey." The voice was her sister's. "Mom wanted me to tell you we just pulled out of church and that we're stopping at _McDonald's." _An implied 'eww' fit neatly into the younger girl's pause. "But yeah, she wants to know what you and the... Elves would like." StarrySea stopped again, and Crackers heard muffled words that could have been, _"cyclops emu" _(which evoked, by the way, a surprisingly pitiful mental image). "And she says to stick with the Dollar Menu."

"Okay, let me just go ask-" She rotated her heel to turn and take orders from the Plushies, but then opted against it. "Never mind. Get 'em five cheeseburgers and five small fries-they won't know the difference. And I'll do... A plain hamburger and an order of apple slices."

"Got it," replied StarrySea, after yet another pause. "All right. See ya soon."

"See ya!" replied Crackers, and pressed the 'END' button, which beeped cheerily before she replaced the cordless landline on its charging dock. The authoress swallowed, took a deep breath, and rolled her shoulders back. She then all but traipsed back out into the living room.

Maeglin, still giving the glass shards a wide berth, had seated himself against one side of the TV stand's open front. His legs were bent into a pair of mountains, and his elbows rested on his thighs. Eöl at that moment emitted a particularly terrible howl; Crackers cringed to see that the single drop of blood on the couch cushion had multipled into a blizzard of crimson speckles, dark brown against the green of the sofa.

"Who was calling?" inquired Maeglin, sounding again like the words wanted to escape him.

"My mom," answered Crackers, looking down at him. "She's going to bring us food soon." In a less dignified, realistic, and sophisticated piece of literature than this, a shimmering lightbulb would at this point have materialized above her head. "Do you think that'll get them to stop?"

"It's possible," replied Maeglin, staring morosely at his lap. (He still had that headache.) "Though I should think by this time my father would begin to weaken on his own."

"You know best," said Crackers, forcing a smile to lift the corners of her mouth. She kept her eyes on the floor for a moment (and not only because that view of Maeglin's hair was Mighty Fine), letting her gaze alight on the Envelope. "Hey, could you pass me my envelope?" she asked.

The Elf silently grabbed it and held it up. "Thanks," said Crackers, and clenching her eyes shut for a second, opened it up. _Nothing. _Still. _Figures. _With a frustrated huff of breath, she folded the paper devil and placed it back in her pocket.

_**Snap! **_Maedhros had apparently resorted to simple slapping, and his flat hand could be heard against Eöl's skin._** Crackle! **_Eöl immediately took Maedhros' useless right arm and twisted it._** Pop! **_Fingon socked Eöl across the jawbone. _**Sorry, but no Rice Krispies. **_(After all they were getting McDonald's, don't you remember?)

Crackers glanced down at her watch. 7:40, pointed the tiny hands. _Let's see,_ she mused,_ they'll probably be home in about fifteen minutes, so 7:55... Ai! They'll probably be home in about fifteen minutes! _Icy butterflies suddenly landed in the authoress' stomach. Her mother and sister were going to walk right into the disaster that had become their living room, and there was nothing in the world she could do about it.

The next quarter-hour should have dragged on infinitely, but instead it passed in a heartbeat. It was all too soon (and no small amount of blows and shouts later) that the sallow sheen of headlights appeared in the driveway, and the house began to thrum as the Honda pulled up beneath the carport.

Fingon suddenly whirled about, putting his back to the fight to face Crackers. She noticed that a violet ring had appeared around his left eye. "What's that?" he demanded, inhaling sharply as he pointed in the direction of the car.

"My mom and sister are home," said Crackers simply, trying (and failing, of course) not to gnaw her lip.

"So soon?" he replied, but said no more, seeing as Eöl socked him in the back of the head with a "Take that, _dear brother_!" and a sardonic smirk on his bleeding lips.

"This'll be the last time-" Fingon gasped and swung his fist. "-that we call eachother-" He stepped, hard, on Eöl's foot. "kinsman!"

"How disappointing!" roared Eöl, even as the locks on the backdoor began to click, the door itself to squeal on its hinges as it opened. Crackers could hear the rustling of paper bags as the meal was set on the kitchen table.

"We're ho-ome!" called Crackers' mother, which must have been when she noticed the thunking, cursing racket resounding from the living room. "What the sam-patch-?" she exclaimed, marching into the room with StarrySea close behind her.

Crackers attempted to transform a wince into a sheepish grin, but the expression on her face remained overwhelmingly pained. "Sorry?" she said, but it's unlikely she was heard.

Crackers' mother pursed her lips, ran a hand over her glasses and through her blonde bangs. "_What _is going on in here?!" she shouted.

With one final knee to the stomach (Curufin's, for good measure), Eöl stumbled backward, and the ruckus of the fray dwindled to silence. Mom's eyes crossed the room slowly, absorbing the sight of blood on the couch and the carpet, the prismatic stripes across what was left of the TV screen, the Wii remote amid the heap of glass shards at Maeglin's side, and her elder daughter, grinning like a fool. The Grand Matriarch's face contorted for just a moment with simmering wrath, but she appeared to regain composure.

"I'll react better once I've eaten," she announced. "Let's do that first."


	17. No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream Before

_Why, _oh why, thought Crackers, _don't we have any skin-coloured ones?_

I'm frankly unsure as to the reason that, some months ago, the family had opted to purchase such vivacious Band-Aids, but the colourful adhesives were now serving a Glorious Purpose, spread like war paint across injured elvish skin. Maedhros idly rubbed at a yellow one beneath his eye, then reached for another French fry.

Our eight dignified personages (being Crackers the Renowned, her mother, her sister, and her five Plush guests) were scattered in various positions across the small living room, with Maeglin and the three mortals at the dining room table on the back wall, Maedhros sandwiched between Fingon and Curufin on the couch, and Eöl in the recliner, hunched greedily over his food. It had only take a few minutes to clean up the elves themselves sufficiently to eat, but the living room, on the other hand, still looked as if it had just been raided by a herd of Care Bears, who had beaten someone up and left a rainbow across the TV as their sign.

"You all were aiming for _the cat_?" inquired Crackers' mother, dipping a French fry in ketchup and popping it into her mouth.

"_Eöl _was aiming for the cat," amended Fingon smugly.

Eöl merely glowered at the (one-time) High King. Crackers watched the blue bandage on the Dark Elf's cheek undulate with his forceful chewing. Mom merely sighed, posing another inquiry, "Which cat was it?"

Crackers cringed. _Really bad question. _"Giselle..." she answered reluctantly, knowing her mother's soft spot for the little cat's background of abuse. Her sister, on the other hand, snorted a laugh and smirked. StarrySea wasn't exactly an animal lover, to the tune of every cat in the house knowing _**"OUT!" **_better than its own name.

"Poor thing." Mom shook her head. "Now she'll _really _never learn to come out from under the bed." She set down the anomaly of a late-night Coke. "What was she doing out here in the first place?"

"I guess it was a litter-box emergency," said Crackers. "She got through behind the couch when she was heading to the laundry room, but Inke was in the way when she came back, so she had to run through the middle of the floor."

"Which was when she made the eternally regrettable mistake of running under Eöl's feet," remarked Curufin through a mouth of cheeseburger.

"How then can _I_ be blamed for it?" Eöl's tone was most defensive. "The accursed thing nearly tripped me."

"I hear ya, bro." StarrySea nodded her amused agreement over a milkshake. (Crackers assumed that the expensive treat must have been a consolation prize for the current state of family affairs.)

Mom sighed again. "So you threw the Wii-remote at the Gis-meister, hit the TV instead, then decided to beat the living daylights out of eachother?" She paused, rubbed her temples. "It shouldn't be funny, and it isn't, but..." She trailed off, the ghost of a weary smile creeping onto her features.

"Only in our house, right?" Crackers grinned shyly, hoping the joke would bolster her mother's (seeming) amusement.

"Yeah." Mom shut her eyes briefly and smirked.

"You have our sincerest apologies, madame." From the couch, Maedhros smiled radiantly. "I assure you we will do our utmost to make amends for your television, your carpet, and your furniture, if need be."

"They showed up on our porch in cardboard boxes!" hissed StarrySea. "What can they possibly do to pay for our stuff?"

Maeglin leaned toward the girl, quickly said, voice low, "Absolutely nothing..."

"Cousin, I'll have you know that at least _some _of us still have our etiquette." Maedhros would have looked much more dignified without the trio of crinkled yellow Band-Aids smothering his expression.

"Etiquette's for cravens," remarked Eöl from the recliner. "That's why I didn't teach my son any."

"And you're terribly proud of that, are you?" Fingon countered, looking somewhat repulsed.

"As a matter of fact, yes," answered Eöl. "Though a lot of good it did me..."

"Are you then calling me craven, Father?" Maeglin's smirk matched his condescending tone.

"Why shouldn't I, after you left me to be attacked by Golodhrim a _second _time?"

"And I'd do it a third!" Maeglin returned. "You should just be grateful they didn't throw you off a precipice today5."

"Insufferable child," muttered the Sinda, and shoved a wad of French fries into his mouth.

Maedhros must have cleared his throat for fifteen seconds straight before resuming his offer in address to Crackers' mother. "But yes, madame, we'll be happy to make restitution in whatever way we can." He nudged Fingon and Curufin with his elbows, glared pointedly at Eöl and Maeglin. "Won't we?" he said shrilly.

"Certainly!" That was Fingon's reply, of course; the others mumbled about _"What's in it for me?"_; _"Oh yes, fault the son for the father's misdeeds"_; and _"Thrice-cursed feline." _But I suppose they must have nodded, for Mom and Maedhros judged it as a consensus.

"You can start," said Mom, crumpling up her fry bag and burger wrapper, "by cleaning up. It looks like a tsunami went off in here!"

_"Many hands make light work," _or so the saying goes, and despite Maedhros being one short, that proved the case here. Crackers personally presented Maeglin with the broom and dustpan, smiling sweetly and indicating the pile of glass by the TV. Curufin and Eöl scrubbed the couch and carpet with Oxyclean; I believe that each (accidentally, of course) received a spray in the face at some point. In answer to Fingon's _"What should be done with the television?"_, Mom frowned, sighed, and instructed him to "take it to the Rumpke."

"There's a large trash can outside," Crackers translated. She escorted him to the backdoor, which she unlocked before pointing to the gargantuan, brown receptacle on the porch.

Within sixty minutes, the living room all but sparkled, looking good as new but for the gaping hole between the bookcases where the TV should have been.

"Well, I was gonna say we could watch our Netflix movie now, but..." said Mom, emerging from her bedroom to survey the finished work. She raised an eyebrow and smirked. "But yeah, it looks fine in here to me. Y'all should probably set up the bed stuff again soon, but Crackers, why don't you bring a snack in my bedroom?"

Crackers gulped. _Here it comes, _she thought morosely, heading into the kitchen to methodically gather a bottle of Ensure and a veritable mountain of Tropical Trail Mix. She paraded mournfully through the living room with a laden paper plate and made the short turns into the hallway and then into Mom's room.

The light of the bulb beneath the still fan illumined the chamber's sky-blue walls, allowed Crackers a glance in her mother's dresser mirror. A hunched, timid figure crept slowly around the bed, her brown, be-ponytailed head bowed almost pitifully; she was still wearing her Chick-fil-A uniform.

"They have to go," said Mom, spinning her teal office-chair around from her desk to face Crackers, who took a seat on the bed.

The authoress, nodded, began sorting her trail mix. "I know." She sighed and pressed her dry lips firmly together. "But I have no clue how to get rid of them."

"Well, you better figure it out," was the simple reply. "I laughed it off tonight, but they've made you leave work, cost you twenty bucks for a stupid red suitcase because one of them has an attitude, and now they've destroyed our TV. They've only been here a day, and this is already totally out of control."

"I know, I know," answered Crackers; to her own chagrin, her voice became something like a whine. "I don't like it any more than you do, but I'm stuck. What do you want me to do, turn 'em loose on the streets?"

"That'd be fine." Mom shrugged.

"I can't do that!" Crackers popped a craisin and a cashew into her mouth. "Never mind the fact that they're mine, and I'm stuck looking after them, I really think it would be... unsafe. For everybody. In a fifty-mile radius."

"But it wouldn't take long for them to get taken to prison or locked up for nutjobs, going by what we've seen today. Those five behind bars sounds pretty darn safe to me. They're a tick-tick-ticking time-bomb; we've got to ditch 'em before they blow us up."

"But, Mama, they're... guests. We can't just throw them out." With a grin, she tried the humour approach: "That isn't very good manners."

Mom snorted. "They say manners are for 'cravens.'"

"That's just Eöl-don't pay him any attention." Crackers thoughtfully chewed a Macadamia nut and a chunk of dried papaya. "He's crazy."

"I noticed." Mom smiled before swiveling her chair back around toward her laptop. "We've still got to fix this tomorrow."

~oOo~

Some time later, Crackers found herself, stomach appallingly full, shivering in a too-short green sleeping bag on the floor of her sister's room. As on the previous night, Maedhros had taken her own bed, with Maeglin and Curufin on sacred (and by that I mean hole-y) air mattresses in her bedroom floor; Eöl and Fingon were bunked in the living room, on the recliner and the couch, respectively.

Crackers was adjusting the fleece blanket on top of her sleeping bag in a vain attempt to get comfortable, when StarrySea suddenly whispered into the darkness, "They're actually still really hot."

The authoress suppressed a chuckle. "And they actually still have really good hearing," she whispered back.

"Right," the younger girl scarcely more than breathed. "Well, g'night."

"G'night," returned her older sister.

It usually would have taken Crackers far longer to get to sleep-especially in the middle of the floor-but it had been a tiring day, and besides, she'd just drunk a protein shake and consumed eight ounces of trail mix. She was out like a firework (though not with a bang).

_Lizard. In the middle of her backyard, Crackers bends to the ground, examining the veritable menagerie inexplicably having taken up residence behind her home. Snail. A larger-than-life mollusk leaves a glistening trail on the livid weeds. It is mid-afternoon, the dullest, sleepiest time of day, but Crackers grins beneath the sun, elated._

_Frog. The amphibian jumps across her foot, emerged from a small, brown pond at the foot of the towering silver maple. She laughs, runs after it over the reptiles swarming around her feet. Lizard. She kicks one; it isn't moving. With a shudder, she crouches down above it, dares to poke the grey scales. Stiff-_

_And the scene shifts. It's hot in the elevator at her aunt's former house, too hot, stifling. _

_Taylor Swift blares from the iPod of her cousin beside her, and Crackers wipes her brow, pressing the white button with an envelope on it. The elevator lurches into motion. _

_"Stop jumping, K," she says. Her cousin ignores her. "Stop it; last time we thought we'd break this thing, remember?" Taylor Swift is singing the chicken dance; the elevator keeps rocking. Crackers turns to her cousin once more, but the girl is gone, replaced by a white-haired man in a brown tweed jacket._

_Crackers shrugs, unalarmed. This is fine, too. _

_"I hate to disturb you here..." The man's voice isn't exactly high-just soft-and he speaks with a British accent. "But after your disobedient little snafu, I thought you might appreciate some answers."_

_"Oh! Oh, with the Envelope?" inquires the authoress, and it all returns to her. "I was supposed to read them the Lay of Leithian?"_

_"Yes, of course." The man clears his throat. "That's one of my masterpieces... But it won't do you any good now, I'm afraid. You'll need an entirely new solution if you want to be rid of them..."_

_"Which is?" squeaks the girl. _

_"You'll find out soon enough." The man lifts the corners of his mouth into a genuine smile. "For now, I can only recommend that you follow each instruction you receive. Perhaps that Envelope of yours will start working again in time."_

Crackers' eyes shot open like a pair of cannons, except quieter... and without flinging her eyeballs across the room... (Thank goodness, right? ...Right?) _2:22_, read the digital clock on StarrySea's nightstand. The authoress began fumbling beneath her sleeping bag. _Once she found that stupid Envelope, she was obeying its every word._

**A great thank-you to Elrond's Scribe (whom I can't PM :) for her review! And credit for the title of this chapter goes to the one and only Edgar Allan Poe. :D**


	18. We're Riddled

After groping beneath her sleeping bag for several weary minutes, Crackers at last placed hold on the Envelope, and with that wrapped her arms around her body, bracing herself for the onslaught of cool air as she slipped out from beneath the cover of her blankets. Chills scampered like a thousand hyperactive insects up and down her arms, goose-bumps erecting themselves on the flesh.

Clutching the Envelope to her chest, she stumbled up in the darkness and began a walk to the bathroom by the dim, steady beam of the nightlight there. StarrySea's bedroom floor was at the moment somewhat of a safety hazard; Crackers heard something crunch and crack beneath her bare feet and hoped it was only a hanger.

It only took a few steps to reach the bathroom; standing over the butterfly nightlight (hand-painted by her sister some years ago-which explained the smudged

thing's lack of aesthetic appeal), she lifted the Envelope's creased flap with icy fingers. She bit her lip, clenched her eyes shut... and drew out what appeared to be some sort of field trip waiver.

On the pink sheet of paper's top side, it bore legal jargon and a request for a signature that would apparently shield some establishment or other against a lawsuit when little Johnny lost his GameBoy (or his finger, or his head) on an outing. Crackers frowned and flipped the paper to its reverse. _Ah, here we go..._

The "directions" had been smeared on in dark red ink, that Crackers now realized was so thick it was visible from the opposite side. _Such a rich shade of crimson... _Was it ink at all? Crackers resisted an overwhelming desire to lift it to her nose and sniff. _Focus, you dummy! _she upbraided herself.

_"Riddles were all he could think of," _she read silently, as her heart began sliding down toward her toes. _"Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago... –__The Hobbit__"_

She should have been more ashamed that she face-palmed. It was with dread that she replaced the slip of paper and trudged back through the shadows to her green sleeping bag. She wasn't quite looking forward to the morning.

~oOo~

It was over a dry piece of wheat toast at the dining room table that she twisted her lips, cringed, then popped the question. (And no, silly, it wasn't a marriage proposal. Quite the opposite, in fact.)

"Would you all be interested," she began, peeling the crust off a second slice of toast, "in, er, going home?"

From that angle in the living room, Crackers could see her mother at the kitchen table, nodding her yellow head in slow, but emphatic, approval.

"What mean you by that?" queried Maedhros, bunching his eyebrows together. One of his Band-Aids had come off entirely overnight; one flopped loose, adhered by just one side to his skin, leaving just one yellow bandage-across his prominent left cheekbone-secure.

"Well, I was just thinking that, ah, don't you know, you all might be wanting to... move on from here." She placed the brown crust in her mouth and chewed vehemently.

"Yes," said Curufin from her right. "Yes, I'd like that." His elder brother shot him a reproachful glare. "Anything to get away from the Avar here," he explicated, gesturing vaguely toward Eöl, who was perched on the couch, gnawing three slices of bacon at once.

"Great!" replied Crackers, not waiting for feedback from any of the others. (_Perhaps they'd be too polite to say anything about wanting to leave, anyway, _she thought.) "In that case, you all are gonna have to be prepared to do _anything_..."

"Again you are unclear," answered Fingon. "Do what, exactly?"

"Whatever my Envelope tells me to do to-no, _with _you." She stared down at a half-empty glass of orange juice. "We just have to follow what it says till something works, I think. Or at least that's what Tolk-" She suddenly broke off; if the Elves didn't know who that was, she wasn't about to start explaining.

"Tolkien, you would say?" Maeglin's voice was rather taut. "I hate him."

Curufin perpetuated the conversation when Crackers thought better (or worse) of it. "Why is that, Cousin?" A suppressed smirk set his pallid lips to writhing.

"He always hated me," said the other bitterly. "Having me born to _him_-" Here he pointed to Eöl. "Killing off Mother, letting Idril fall for that straw-headed sop of a mortal, subjecting me to the tortures of _Morgoth_, sinking that spangly little brat Eärendil's teeth into my hand... Then he finally decides he's had enough of me, and what happens? He throws me off Caragdûr, whacks me three bloody times-"

"Literally," snorted Eöl, interrupting.

Maeglin cleared his throat and continued, apparently unfazed. "-against the cliff-face, then plunges me into a raging inferno, for good measure." The room was silent but for the crunching sound of Eöl and his bacon. "So, no," finished the Elf, "I don't care much for that sadistic old coot Tolkien. And I'm not overly inclined to do a thing he says."

Fingon rolled his eyes, and after several more uncomfortable seconds, spoke up. "We all understand your misery, nephew. The Professor really wasn't kind to any of us... Do you have _any _idea how it feels to have your head crushed by a Balrog's mace?"

"Or to despair and throw yourself into a flaming chasm?"

"Or to be choked till you're purple by a mortal with a quarter of your wits?"

"Or to be given a wretched, ungrateful son like yourself?" Eöl looked smug.

Fingon nodded his thanks to the other three Elves before addressing Maeglin once more. "So you see, my dear sister-son, no one present was overlooked by That Man's cruel streak. But-" His eyes took on an unnaturally wicked gleam. "-if you'd like to see him again and exact your vengeance... you have no choice but to do as he says for now." Fingon folded his hands placidly on his lap and smiled.

Maeglin sighed, frowned; his steely eyes began to dart up and down, as if he were in indecisive thought. Not only could Crackers see his mental wheels turning, she could hear them, too: creaking and grinding rapidly against one another.

"All right, then," Gondolin's betrayer announced at last. "For that reason alone, you have my cooperation."

"Well," said Crackers slowly, timidly, "I'll take whatever kind of cooperation I can get."

"Wonderful." Maedhros gave her an encouraging smile. What, then, is our first task?"

Crackers fidgeted for several seconds with the Envelope, and was somewhat surprised to find that the waiver had lingered through the night, seeing as she hadn't immediately gone to do as it said. Perhaps the Envelope knew whether you were giving it a rain-check or a rejection letter, putting off its instructions or saying "no" outright.

"Why don't we have a game of riddles?" She dimpled her face into the curve of a smile.

"How long of a game?" inquired Curufin warily.

"As long as it takes to see if it'll work, I guess?" Crackers exuded uncertainty. "My directions aren't terribly specific."

Maedhros snorted, adjusted his dangling Band-Aid. "Are they ever?"

~oOo~

Some minutes later, Mom was washing up the breakfast dishes; our five dear Elves and our (even dearer) F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. participant were sitting in somewhat of a circle in the living room. Maeglin, Maedhros, and Fingon were on the couch, Eöl (as ever) in the recliner, with Crackers and Maeglin on two of the barstools at the dining room table, rotated to face the others. StarrySea leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, watching silently.

"You can come sit down, if you want." Crackers offered her sister the chair beside her own.

"Okay," said the younger girl, somewhat hesitantly, yet she still emerged into the living room and took a seat.

"So!" said Maedhros. (Crackers thanked her limited posse of lucky stars that he was willing to take charge and conduct this hot mess.) "I'll ask first, if no one else wants to go." The ticking of the Swiss clock hanging above the recliner became very pronounced in the ensuing silence. "All right, then-"

"Oh, I have one!" Crackers piped up, shooting her hand in the air (apparently to be called upon by Schoolmaster Maedhros). Glancing around, she caught StarrySea's eye. "Don't tell them," she said, before reciting: "'What's black, white and re[a]d all over?'"'

The ridiculous girl never stopped to consider whether or not the Elves had been introduced to the concept of a newspaper in their English classes. Which was a mistake.

Maedhros drummed his fingers on his thigh. His unsure, "A battlefield?" emerged at the same time as Eöl's, "Curufin's face after I've hit it."

Crackers blanched, fearing the worst once again.

Curufin merely smoothed his shirt and rolled his eyes, turning to Crackers. "Obviously, it's Eöl after the... _Caragdûr incident_."

Crackers cleared her throat, realizing, _That was, in fact, a mistake..._

"No, it's-"

She opted to cut Maeglin off. "All wrong!" she announced, eyes wide, grinning nervously. "Though it probably wasn't a fair question... It's a newspaper, but shall we try again?"

Fingon's mouth rounded into a perfect circle. "Ohhh, it's a language joke... No wonder none of us could think of it." Yet Crackers still wasn't entirely confident that was the only reason she'd received such answers.

"All right, all right," said Maedhros, "I have a good one: 'I drive men mad for love of me, easily beaten, never free.' What is it?"

"Money?" guessed Crackers.

"Not exactly..." Maedhros replied, eyes scanning the group. "Anyone else?"

"Lúthien Tinúviel." Curufin crossed his arms and smirked. Even StarrySea-who had only read _The Silmarillion _once-managed a snort at that.

Fingon still looked amused when he spoke up. "Is it gold?" he queried.

"Of course!" Maedhros answered, turning to Crackers. "'Easily beaten'-that's the one place you went wrong."

Crackers shook her head and quickly lifted her eyebrows. "I shoulda given that line more thought..." But I fear the only line she was giving any thought to was one of inquiry: _How would she know if this was going to work? When should she stop and try for a different set of directions?_

"You answered," said Maedhros to Fingon, "so you get to ask next."

"Delightful..." For Fingon, the response was unusually sarcastic. It took him roughly 45.37 seconds to pose a question. "Well," he said, "this one's probably rather easy, but... 'I lack much reason, but often rhyme, and require logic to pass the time. Though all are different, they act the same, the answer is practically in the name. What am I?'"

"The Vanyar!" Maedhros' reply was all but instantaneous. "Or possibly a riddle..."

"Yes," said Fingon, failing to hide a smirk. "And I beg your pardon, Maeglin and I are related to two of those!"

"That doesn't change the facts." Curufin shrugged, giving his brother a nod.

Maedhros sighed, lips twitching with a smile. "Shall I go again, or does anyone else want to take a turn?"

"I will," asserted Maeglin. "Here's one for you, Father: 'What goes around and in the house, but never touches the house?'"

During the ruminative pause that followed, Crackers' thoughts meandered again down paths of concern for the success of this activity. Here they were, three riddles into the game (four, if you count the initial flop of '_red all over'_), and there was no sign of the Plushies disappearing any time soon. Perhaps someone had to win...?

"Grass!" declared StarrySea, moving a finger idly across the screen of her iPod Touch.

"Not exactly..." Maeglin replied. "I shudder to think you've been in a house with grass on the inside."

Fingon pursed his lips. "The butler?"

Maeglin shook his head. "He touches the house. Father? This one's really just for you..." The Dark Elf's son gave him a caustic smile.

"Your gorgeous golden princess because she floats about on a cloud that opens doors for her?" Eöl sneered. "Don't mock me, Son."

Maeglin clucked his tongue. "So now we're going back to the days before you even named me... I'm terribly offended," he said dryly. After a few seconds, he glanced around the group again.

"All right," said Curufin, "all right, I've got it." He inhaled dramatically, hands poised as if calling the whole world to stop and listen. "It's wind."

"That's the riddle catch-all, isn't it, Cousin?" Maeglin's grin showed he was enjoying himself immensely. "But no. Wind touches the house." He paused. "Everyone's guessed but you, Crackers."

"Huh! What?" Blinking, Crackers looked up from the Envelope (which she'd been folding rather pointlessly into a fan while she thought). "Sorry, can you repeat the question?"

"Of course. 'What goes around and in the house, but never touches the house?'"

"Uhh, time?"

"You're just like Curufin-" (Crackers hadn't the chance to tell him that was not a compliment.) "-and you're wrong like him, too. Does everyone give up?" He took the group's silence as a _yes_. "Father, here you are!" He grinned like the Cheshire Cat. "It's the Sun."

"'Insufferable child..." snarled Eöl.

Crackers had again ceased to pay attention; she'd replaced the directional waiver when they first began riddling, and now that they had all at last been stumped, something would happen? Or at least she could get the next piece of ever-so-helpful advice? She slipped a finger beneath the Envelope's flap.

**A quick thank-you to my guest reviewer, **_**5SecsToThrowItFB**_**! In reply to your thoughts on the **_**Lay of Leithian**_**… just wait till the next chapter, my friend. ;D**

**-Crackers**


	19. Sam Gamgee Is Not My Friend

**Another thank-you to my guest reviewer, **_**5SecsToThrowItFB**_**!**

The history of the Black Speech had, to Crackers, always been somewhat shadowy. She knew, of course, that it was Sauron's personal brainchild (though she wasn't exactly fond of the idea that he had devised something so innately _ugly_). However, its relation to-and distinction from-the Orkish jargons of the First and Third Ages had always left her in something like the dark. At any rate, though, she never would have fathomed that the tongue-devised long after every one of her Plushies' untimely demises-would have proved so terribly offensive.

_"...this I have read: __**Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul**_. _-Gandalf, __The Fellowship of the Ring_"

The black square of origami paper, with its silver ink that, Crackers thought, could bloody well have been _ithildin _(despite the obvious fact that she could see it by the light of day), had failed to include That Bit about the 'astounding change' in the Wizard's voice. _Stupid black sqaure of origami paper._

But don't place all the blame on the paper (nor on the Envelope from which it sprang). Our beloved nincompoop (whose snack food of a name shall not be mentioned) saw fit to recite the sheet's contents at the moment she saw them.

"Ash nazg durbatuluk-" And her high, clear voice suddenly resembled the anguish of a trash compactor with a hangover. "-ash nazg gimbautl, ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."

Perhaps it was mere coincidence, but Anor chose the instant Crackers ended to emerge from behind the grey winter clouds and pour her light into the living room once more. Fingon slowly removed his hands from his ears, as nasty a grimace on his face as if he were watching the lovers' tryst of a pair of Balrogs.

"What in Arda was that sound?" exclaimed the High King indignantly. "I know not what sort of curse you have placed upon us, yet rest assured it shall bite you, as well!"

"Wait, no," stuttered Crackers, distracted, "it wasn't a curse, no." _Come on, come on, _was her mental plea. _Let this have worked... Let them pack up and leave now..._

"Of course it wasn't a curse!" agreed Maeglin, whose face and hands had remained motionless throughout the brief affair. "I heard far worse than that in Angband." He shrugged.

"As did I," returned Maedhros pointedly. "And afterward I've _never_ wanted to hear anything so similar to those oaths." He frowned and added gravely, "But today I have."

"Only because all you can cover is one ear," snickered Eöl.

"How very _mature_," said Curufin in a voice like black ice, "to mock my brother's handicap."

Maedhros emphatically cleared his throat. "I thank you, brother, but I can defend _myself _against such a childish slight."

"If only you thought the same of me, Russandol... EIf you don't appreciate my efforts, consider them merely a taste of your own medicine." Crackers and StarrySea thought nothing of the turn of phrase (and were more concerned at the thought of the two Feanorians fighting out their dispute on the carpet). The other four elves, however, turned toward Curufin with expressions of confusion.

"What?" said Maeglin, slender eyebrows scrunched like a pair of malnourished caterpillars.

Curufin sighed, made a great show of haughtily straightening his form. "Am I the only one who studied his euphemisms?"

While Curufin and StarrySea launched into a convoluted explanation of the idiom's meaning ("Medicine," Crackers' sister was soon saying, "but not like drugs. Like not marijuana or cocaine or anything- 'cause the other person might actually _want _a taste of that..."), Crackers bit her lip and glanced uncomfortably at the ceiling. She tapped her fingers impatiently against the cat-scratching dining room tablecloth; she was watching, waiting, hoping for something, but she didn't know what. If the Black Speech was going to work, it seemed that the results should have been fairly immediate... Maybe it was time to try again?

~oOo~

"What the sam-patch are you doing, Crackers?" Mom had finished washing up the breakfast dishes and was nearly ready to leave the kitchen entirely. Her daughter, however, was hunched between the gaping refrigerator-door and the fruit-drawer at the open appliance's bottom, rummaging through the crisper's contents.

"All right, yes! We've got five..." the authoress was muttering, daintily removing first a red apple, then a green and more. She arranged the shining spheres on the kitchen floor beside her. "Stupidest idea I've ever heard of..." she continued beneath her breath.

Her mother tried again. "What are you doing? I don't really think _you're _getting a snack... And what are you getting them all dirty for?"

"Oh, shoot!" she exclaimed, ignoring her mother's first query. "I'll probably have to take a bite for good measure... And now I've got to wash them off... And extra calories from five bites of apple, too." Her prattle had become quite glum by the time she shut the fridge, gathered the fruits in her arms, and walked the single step to the sink. The dish-bubbles the basin still bore were slowly dissipating.

It was a rather slapdash job she made of rinsing the apples, but what did it matter? She was going to try and bite the sides that _hadn't _touched the floor, and besides, they were going to be very small bites... She turned to leave the kitchen, eyes downcast.

"What in the world are you doing with those apples?" repeated Mom, still standing in the doorway to the living room.

Crackers didn't quite answer. "Mama, this is my last good-bye," she said, and marched past her mother with a sniffle.

An infrared, apple-shaped Post-It Note of Doom still lay adjacent to the Envelope on the dining room table. After half a dozen dismayed read-throughs, its veritable curse had emblazoned itself onto Crackers' mind:

_"With a sudden flick, quick as lightning, an apple left his hand and hit Bill square on the nose. He ducked too late, and curses came from behind the hedge. 'Waste of a good apple,' said Sam regretfully, and strode on." __**-**__The Fellowship of the Ring_

_Why've you gotta be so impulsive, Sam? _Crackers complained of the words that would clearly get her taken out of the house in a body bag. _Throw an apple at him? Seriously? What about the poor, innocent nerd who's gonna have to throw apples at a pack of elven warriors, thanks to you?_

"So," Maedhros slowly began to summarize, "'a taste of your own medicine' is like when the patient puts hemlock in the bad healer's tea? Or when somebody shoots the drug-lord who sells powdered sugar instead of the good stuff?"

Crackers had meanwhile moved into the living room and resumed her seat at the dining room table. Maeglin had cast an odd look toward her and the apples, but she just smiled demurely and took a nibble out of each one.

"I guess so," started StarrySea, but she never finished the reply.

"Okay, everybody," Crackers interrupted, holding up a particularly red apple with a trembling hand, "I'm about to do something really-stupid-and-really-mean-but-the-Envelope-sai d-to-and-yeah. I'm sorry; don't hurt me?" And with that she hurled the apple at Curufin's face.

It smacked his already-bandaged skin with an unsavoury _**pop**_. "What in Varda's name was that for?!" swore the Elf.

Crackers winced apologetically. "Do you want to get out of here or not?"

She took the next apple-this, a livid green-and chucked it at Maedhros. "So sorry!" She placed a hand to her blanching cheek even as the red apple, returning to her through the air, ricocheted off her forehead. "I can't help it!" she said to Curufin.

"That doesn't mean it wasn't _painful_." He tilted his head to one side and quirked an eyebrow. Maedhros, meanwhile, sighed and took a bite out of the Granny Smith that had just alighted on him.

The next burgundy missile was for Eöl; only after it had left her hand did Crackers realize how squishy its skin was. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry..." From her angle, the only place it could hit him was directly on the top of the head. So it did-with something like a splat.

Had Eöl lifted the dented fruit off his crown with more gentility, he'd have said, _"Top of the morning' to ye, gov'nor," _as he did so. Crackers couldn't see well (but everyone else could) that his face was a mask of superficial tranquility. He swallowed visibly and sniffed, then delicately pinched a small pile of sallow apple-mush out of his hair. He rotated silently, slowly, around in the recliner, until he was kneeling on the cushion, sitting backward in the chair, and looking Crackers square in the eyes.

Nervously, she began scraping the dry skin off her lips with her teeth. "Sor-" she began, which was the exact moment at which a flicked pinch of apple-mush landed in her eyelashes.

"Why didn't you throw that one," said Eöl, giving a counterfeit smile through gritted teeth, "at Curufin?"

"Trust me," replied the authoress, "I wish I had." She flashed Curufin a _just-kidding-you-know-I've-gotta-humour-Crazybeans -over-here _grin. She gave the Fëanorian no chance to respond before lifting another apple; the fruity sphere had soon taken wing for Fingon.

Fortunately, the High King responded like his copper-haired cousin. After the apple bounced off a purple Band-Aid on his nose and into his lap, he merely rubbed the spot with a "That'll leave a bruise," and raised the fruit to his mouth as a free snack.

Maeglin heaved an immense sigh. "I'm next?"

Crackers nodded, but as he was sitting next to her, the airborne weapon proved all but innocuous.

"Well," said Maedhros several seconds later, with a stern glance toward Crackers, who cringed and began examining her fingernails. "I should hope that accomplished its purpose?"

"Maybe?" replied Crackers dismally. "I guess I can check..." She slipped the Post-It back into the Envelope with a dark glare, folded the flap, and waited.

~oOo~

"I swear I'm not making these things up..." moaned Crackers, surveying the white card's elegant gold calligraphy for a third time. "I'll pass it around to you all to _prove _I have nothing to do with this." She handed the Envelope's latest piece of advice to Maeglin.

"No," said Maeglin upon reading it, "you certainly have no part in this. Even you wouldn't think of an idea this bad."

_"Gee thanks, sassy-pants," _she wanted to reply, but (fortunately for the-mainly-nonviolent reputation of this narrative) she held her tongue. (Not literally; that would have looked quite strange.) Instead she opted simply to nod as Maeglin passed the card to his father.

Eöl glanced it over briefly, then laughed aloud, a dark, foreboding laugh, like stormclouds making faces. He was grinning from ear to ear when he handed the (apparent) joke to Fingon.

"Just read it aloud, Káno," sighed Maedhros. "The suspense is too much for me." He twisted his lips into a wry smile between bites of sour apple.

"As you please, Russandol," answered Fingon genially, and clearing his throat, read with dignity: "_...he made the Song of Parting, in praise of Luthien and the lights of heaven; for he believed that he must now say farewell to both love and light. Of that song these words were part:_

_**'Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,**_

_**for ever blest since here did lie**_

_**and here with lissom limbs did run**_

_**beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,**_

_**Lúthien Tinúviel**_

_**more fair than mortal tongue can tell.**_

_**Though all to ruin fell the world**_

_**and were dissolved and backward hurled**_

_**unmade into the old abyss,**_

_**yet were its making good, for this-**_

_**the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea-**_

_**that Lúthien for a time should be.'**_

_"And he sang aloud..." _Fingon's grey eyes widened and he stared down at the card in enigmatic silence.

"No," said Curufin at once. "No. I refuse to sing anything in praise of that vile, despicable, condescending, hair-flinging, high-singing, pet-stealing, Silmaril-robbing wench of a _peredhel_."

"Hmm," remarked Eöl, blasé, "I wonder what he really thinks of her."

"Well..." Crackers put her (figurative, at least in this case) 'Helper-Buddy' nametag on. "It just says 'he,' so I don't think it means all of you... And I don't think it means me, either."

"Then which of us does it mean?" Eöl pointed out. "There's no way to know unless we all sing, correct?"

"I suppose not..." Fingon conceded dismally, glancing warily at Maedhros, who had let his apple (half-eaten) fall to the ground, crossed his arms, and was staring stonily into his lap with his jaw rigid.

"Does anyone even know the tune?" Maeglin pointed out.

"I do," said Maedhros morosely. "Thingol's messengers sang it all the way to Himring and back."

"Ohh," murmured Crackers into her lap, "_those_ must be the 'scornful words' when Thingol refused to give up the Silmaril the first time..."

"That's a lot of singing for them," Eöl snorted. "But then you'll certainly know it well enough to lead us..."

Maedhros sighed until his shoulders heaved. "I suppose I do."

Curufin's eyes grew to the size of the Silmarils themselves. "What is _wrong _with you, Russandol?"

"If it's the only way..." responded his brother, then cleared his throat. "_Lalalalala, mememememe..."_

_"Do re mi fa so la ti!" _exclaimed Crackers helpfully.

Maeglin gave them both a look of disgusted confusion.

"I've been Plush since last I sang," Maedhros explained, dignity flowing off his words like a dress's train. Shooting a glance at Crackers, he added, "I don't know what's the matter with _her_."

"It's okay," put in StarrySea. "Nobody does."

Crackers shot her sister a teasingly reproachful look, then suggested, "Should we all just gather around the lyrics, then? I've never memorized this one... I'm with you, Curufin-bad subject matter."

"Finally!" declared the younger Fëanorian. "She says something intelligent."

But in the end the five elves (with the additions of StarrySea and Crackers) found themselves clustered over the pristine, white card, clearing their throats and beginning to sing.

Crackers stood next to Curufin; she didn't hear him actually open his mouth once in the song's duration. He instead opted for a series of grunts and guttural humming to the general rhythm. When the tune ended, his visage acquired a terrible grimace, and he quickly seated himself, crossing his arms and glaring moodily at a cat-puke stain on the carpet.

"Did it work?" Fingon inquired.

"I don't think so..." Maedhros replied, turning to Crackers. "Unless you have proof otherwise?"

"We can wait, can't we?" said Maeglin smoothly. "It might take several minutes to take effect."

They did so, standing in the middle of the carpet with eyes darting around like they'd all just had one too many Red Bulls. (For most present, one would have _been _too many.) One minute passed, then two and three: nothing happened, nothing changed, and it was the fourth set of instructions.

Crackers had had it. "This is just getting stupid!" she announced.

"_'Getting'?_" remarked Eöl.

"Whatever," she answered, disembarking from her chair and snatching up both the Envelope and the card. "Excuse me, but I'm off to speak my mind."


	20. Doom Gets Written in Purple

"Elves too much for you?" Mom's teasing voice yanked Crackers out of concentration. The authoress was perched at her cluttered desk, nose planted firmly in the thick of _The Silmarillion_. "Looks like you needed to escape."

"Yeah, pretty much." Crackers didn't avert her eyes from "Of Maeglin"; she fiddled with a purple ballpoint pen above a spiral notebook. "Whoever the freak behind this whole shabang is, he's got a sick sense of humour, and I'm done with his games."

"According to your little story, wouldn't that be Tolkien?" Mom quirked an eyebrow, grinned. "The dead guy that you pretty much _worship_?"

"Yeah, well he's a freak." Crackers ferociously began flipping toward "Of Beren and Lúthien." "Let's see here... What'll say the most...?" she murmured, twirling the pen between her fingers.

"So, what exactly are you doing right now?" Mom crossed the zebra-print rug to place a pile of folded laundry on the bed.

"This freaking Envelope works two ways." She inclined her head toward the Vessel of Woe's position on her desk. "Or at least it should."

~oOo~

Maedhros bit his lip and scratched idly at his Band-Aids. "What did Crackers say she'd gone to do?"

"Speak her... mind?" Fingon hesitantly answered him. "I wasn't aware she did that."

StarrySea shrugged and piped up from the dining room table, "Neither was I."

"Well," said Maeglin, voice controlled, "that's _terribly_ comforting, isn't it? We can hold out hope that she doesn't do anything (else) stupid."

"There's a fool's hope for you," muttered Eöl. For once, not even Curufin bothered to disagree with him.

An awkward quiet began to settle over our merry company, the ticking of the Swiss clock (that really couldn't keep time) growing increasingly pronounced. StarrySea had almost started an oh-so-thrilling iPod Touch game of _Cut the Rope _to pass the time when Fingon suddenly spoke up.

"Are they supposed to itch like this?" He profusely rubbed the blue Band-Aid bifurcating his shapely right eyebrow. "Is it the wound or the adhesive that has suddenly become so irritated?"

"Oh, yeah." StarrySea glanced up from little green Om-Nom, hero and glory of _Cut the Rope. _"They start getting really itchy after a while. You can always peel them off-"

"Good!" Fingon interrupted her and attempted to do so. "It's stuck," he muttered and pulled harder. Then harder. And harder, until he emitted a yowl of pain (something like the sound a cat makes when one places its head in a blender-not that I would know) and was holding the bandage between thumb and forefinger. He rubbed the slightly-pale spot where the adhesive had been.

"-if you like pain," finished StarrySea lamely, lips contorting beneath a repressed smirk.

Fingon's face remained fixed into a grotesque wince. "You could have-" He massaged the spot again. "-mentioned that sooner."

~oOo~

On Crackers' end, the pile of Tolkien books on her desk was only growing, sprouting up to surround her notebook like a city-wall or a cubicle. She slammed down _The Lost Road _in frustration; no way was she going to find anything helpful in there. The one time she'd read it, she'd all but drowned in the early drafts of _Akallabêth_. (She loved the Histories of Middle-earth, but Lord-a-mercy, those commentaries could be like sleeping pills à la mode.)

Thumbing through the first chapter of _The Hobbit_, however, she soon found something that would be of use. She proceeded to sling her foot up on the desk to hold the tattered paperback open, then hastily jotted down the proper quote with a malevolent grin.

"This isn't retaliation or anything," she prattled to herself. (Don't worry for her sanity, friends; she did that often.) "It's just using effective resources to make a point." Or so she hoped of her little project.

"Hm, hm, hm, hmm..." Crackers hummed a tune she'd never heard as she opened _The Lord of the Rings. _Her immense paperback volume contained all six books of Tolkien's masterpiece, and if it were possible, looked even more like the personal victim of a deranged walrus than nearby copies of _The Hobbit _and the Silm. (Crackers loved her books quite literally to death.)

"Alrighty, there's just _got _to be some good stuff in here..." The notebook page before her was still mostly blank.

~oOo~

"Curvo, do you know what this whole experience reminds me of?" Maedhros rotated 180 degrees to face his brother full on.

Curufin rolled his eyes, placed his forehead in the hand whose (naturally, one would hope) attached elbow stood erect on the green couch's armrest. "Pray, tell."

"No, don't; I know this one," said Eöl, lifting a hand to stay Maedhros' impending tale. The red-haired Noldo gave him a strange look, but the Sinda continued, "I wasn't even _there_, and it reminds me of hanging from Thangorodrim-" He didn't wait to be asked why. "-getting banged into a rock over and _over _and over and _over _and over and _over _and over and-"

"We've got it, Father." Maeglin spoke up, as the rest of the Dark Elf's audience was momentarily too aghast for words. "That's a lot of times to get banged into a rock."

If you ever get bored, grab a dictionary and look up the term _'scandalized.' _The illustration there is a copyrighted image of Fingon's face at the moment I've here described.

It was the rich, rollicking sound of Noldorin laughter that shocked the expression off his kingly countenance. Maedhros rocked with hysteria, tears creeping out from his eyes. "Eöl-" Composure fled him, and he swallowed hard to recapture it. "-how did you know?"

~oOo~

_"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over the Hill or across the Water."_

_"A dark shadow fell upon her, and it seemed to her that the sun had sickened and turned black."_

_"Wicked masster!" it hissed. "Wicked masster cheats us..."_

_"Oh, curse you, you stinking thing!" he said. "Go away! Be off! I don't trust you, not as far as I could kick you; but be off. Or I _shall _hurt you..."_

_"I have given you leave to go. Take it, and be gone. By the laws of the Eldar I may not slay you at this time."_

_"It was generally agreed that the joke was in very bad taste..."_

Crackers grinned down at the purple ink declaring her collage of Tolkien quotes and stuck her nose proudly in the air. "I'm doing it," she announced to Elladan and Elrohir, who were at the moment cozily snuggled next to each other (The chinchillas! The chinchillas! No slash here!) "And I don't even care."

Ever so tenderly, she slowly began to tear the sheet out of the notebook by its perforated edge, smiling so broadly that the fourteen famous muscles it took to do so grew sore. With uncharacteristic neatness (for she was the seven-time World Champion of Really Bad Trifolding), she folded the sheet over and sealed her handiwork with an invisible kiss. Brushing aside the white card containing the latest set of useless instructions, she picked up the Envelope. And put her letter inside.

~oOo~

Worlds away, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had nearly mastered Paper Toss for iPhone. Sprawled out on the jewel-strewn sand of an ivory beach, he absentmindedly flicked another wad of virtual paper into the virtual metal bin. "Yes!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet for joy. "Another ten-pointer!"

"Settle down, Tollers," moaned Jack from beside him. "You've been scoring 'ten-pointers' half the blooming morning. And at any rate, my good chap, it's really high time you put away That Thing and did something productive here."

"And what would you suggest?" Ronald resumed his position on the sand, flicked the screen again without looking up.

"You could always take up crochet." Jack shrugged. "Or fishing, or cards-" He was interrupted and suddenly began to boogie.

_"In the middle of the Earth, in the land of the Shire, lives a brave little Hobbit whom we all admire, with his long, wooden pipe and fuzzy, woolly toes, he lives in a Hobbit hole and everybody knows him... Bilbo! (Bilbo!) Bilbo Baggins!" _Leonard Nimoy bellowed his notorious Ballad from the speaker of Tolkien's phone.

"'In the middle of the earth,' my eye," muttered Tolkien. "Why did I _ever_ get this stupid song?" Nonetheless, he tapped the device's screen and placed it to his ear. "Hallo?"

"Professor Tolkien, yes?" The F.A.U.L.T.T.Y. representative on the other end gave him no chance to deny the fact and launched straight in, breathless and babbling. "It's Operation Crack the Crackers, sir! She's put a foreign object in the Envelope; I repeat, sir, a foreign object!"

"What kind of obj-" began Tolkien, but he was immediately cut off.

"A letter, sir! I repeat, sir, a letter, sir; a letter, sir!"

"I understood you perfectly well the first time, Súlimo," answered the Professor with a weary sigh. "Would you care to read me the contents of said letter?"

The Lord of the Breath of Arda took a deep breath and did just that, voice bouncing and jittering so that his creator but barely made out his words. After the recitation came to its end, the Vala could elicit no response for several minutes but the light, bubbling sound of Tolkien's belly laugh.

_What is it? _mouthed Jack at the Professor's side, but the father of Arda merely shook his head, waving his hand dismissively as he chuckled.

"What's to be done, sir?" demanded the Vala. "This development is somewhat... unanticipated."

Tolkien shook his white head, still smiling. "No, it isn't; I was only hoping the dear girl would eventually find wits enough to reply."

"Or wrath, in this case, sir," answered Manwë severely.

"No matter, no matter. At any rate, it's time we paid her a visit."

"We?" squawked the Vala. "But, sir-"

"I'll write you into the Void..." Tolkien let the threat hang; Jack smirked.

"Fine then," came the sulky reply. "I'll transport us both over to the U.S. of A..."

In a feutosecond's time, Ronald had dematerialized with a flash, leaving Jack alone on the beach, watching the aquamarine waves lap at the sand. "Well," he said, "I suppose old Tollers is good for something besides Paper Toss, after all."

~oOo~

Meanwhile, back on the (funny) farm, the Envelope suddenly disintegrated from Crackers' hand. In its place, a fine, ash-grey powder fell from her fingers, spelling out the enigmatic word **"SOON" **on the pale, stained wood of her desk. She gasped and leaped backward, yelling, "Mo-om!" on first instinct.

But no response was to be heard. Instead, her mother was saying, in that odd tone that is both a whisper and a yell, "There's someone at the door! Everybody, get down!"

In what the rabble call "normal households," such words would have been altogether anomalous. For Crackers, StarrySea, and their mother, however, who _never _answered the door to strangers (not even to cookie-peddling Girl Scouts), it mattered little. Crackers was still curious, though, as to the identity of the solicitor, and jogged quickly through her bedroom, her sister's bedroom, and the hallway, to see Fingon on his feet.

"No, we really ought to answer this one..." the Elf was saying, striding regally toward the door. "...How do the modern mortals say it? Ah, yes!" He smiled. "I think this is 'our ride.'"

"I sure hope so, bucko," answered Mom warily, but she still did as he said, unlocking and opening the heavy, white door.

Crackers walked fully into the living room, running a hand nervously over her loose hair. _Could this be...? _She held her breath, hardly daring to hope it, until at last she could see, behind the screen-door, a white-haired gentleman whom she hated and loved. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "Yes! Open it, open it!"

Mom made a face, but did just that. StarrySea and Maeglin scrambled down from the dining room chairs and made their way to the door; Maedhros, Curufin, and Eöl had joined Fingon on their feet. Everyone clustered around the house's entrance.

"Well, _hello_ there," murmured StarrySea suggestively on seeing Tolkien's well-built, golden-haired companion.

Maeglin, however, looked right past the Vala and rolled his eyes. "Well, look who it is, the man who singlehandedly ruined my existence."

"And gave you it, dear Lómion," amended Tolkien primly. "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it." The Professor paid Maeglin's answering snort no heed, instead turning abruptly to Crackers.

"Hello again, my girl." The gentleman beamed. "I do hope my little thank-you present hasn't caused you too much trouble?" He winked.

"Uh, nope, um... No, none at all!" Crackers emitted (not for the first time) a nervous giggle.

"Liar," coughed the Vala at Tolkien's side.

"But all good things must, nonetheless, come to their end," continued the Professor warmly.

_Oh, darn the luck. _Crackers' sarcastic thought snapped its fingers in a mockery of disappointment. "That's fine," is what the authoress managed aloud. Mom nodded along profusely.

"Come along then, my lords." Tolkien beckoned to the Elves, and one by one they filed out past the home's oh-so-dynamic trio of mortal residents. Maedhros and Fingon wished them _Farewell_ with dazzling smiles; the other three kept their eyes downcast.

Finally, the five Elves had been gathered on the porch.

"Thank you for your participation, ladies." Manwë regarded Crackers and her family, then lifted a hand.

"Good-b-" began Crackers, but it was too late, the seven figures had already disappeared, leaving the family staring out onto the dead, brown grass and naked trees of their front lawn. A frigid January wind rushed up beneath the covered front porch, and Mom shut the door.

"Hey, look!" exclaimed StarrySea. She was pointing to the silver, Emerson TV resting on its stand. Its blank, opaque screen was beautifully smooth and whole.

"Well, I'll be durned," said Crackers' mother.

Crackers grinned and walked toward the television, patting it as if to make sure she wasn't hallucinating (which was always, of course, a possibility). The threesome stood there quietly for a moment, before Crackers spoke up. "C'mon, the whole Plushie deal wasn't really that bad... Was it?"

"Yeah," chorused StarrySea and Mom, both nodding. "Yeah, it was."

**And that, friends, is the end! Thank you very much for all of the positive feedback; I would never have finished this without all of your encouragement. :D I hope you've enjoyed!**

**-Crackers**


End file.
